William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus, Actus Primus., Scœna Prima.

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The Tragedie of Coriolanus

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Scœna Prima.

The Tragedy of Coriolanus Pope: The whole history is exactly followed, and many of the principal speeches exactly copied from the life of Coriolanus in Plutarch.—Malone: This play I conjecture to have been written in the year 1610. [See Appendix: Date.] It comprehends a period of about four years, commencing with the secession to the Mons Sacer in the year of Rome 262 [492 B. C.], and ending with the death of Coriolanus A. U. C. 266 [B. C. 488].—Coleridge (iv, 100): This play illustrates the wonderful impartiality of Shakespeare's politics. His own country's history furnished him with no matter but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Jul. Cæs. you see Shakespeare's good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown's aristocracy of Spirit.

Actus Primus. Scœna Prima. Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): During this act use of the entire stage space available is indicated. During Scœna Prima, including what Rowe first called ‘scene ii,’ the action passed to and fro upon the ample fore-stage, which in the Globe Theatre jutted far out into the pit and gave room for the stalking about of the Mutinous Citizens, and later served, during what was first marked by Rowe as scene iv, and scenes vi, vii, ix, and x, so first marked by Capell, for the frays of Romans and Volscians, simulating warfare.

Scœna Prima Mrs Griffiths (p. 431): The nature and reasoning of all mutinous caballers are fully shown in this short scene. The common people are apt to impute all national grievances or calamities to the fault of their rulers, tho' ever so unavoidable from the nature of things, failure of seasons, or other

incidental misfortunes whatsoever. If freedom of speech and the liberty of the press were not restrained in Turkey, I make no doubt but a Mussulman populace would charge the plague to the account of their Sultans or their Viziers. In the same scene that abatement of esteem and praise, which is the natural consequence of persons appearing to over-rate their own merits, more especially when this is betrayed by showing pride or contempt to others, is very justly remarked on.— Courtenay (ii, 212), who cares in general but little for dramatic effect as compared with historic accuracy, here remarks that the secession of the Plebeians to the Mons Sacer was in protest at the actions of the Patricians and that ‘the opening of the play (though placed in a street in Rome) is evidently meant to represent this occurrence. But Shakespeare has not followed Plutarch as to the cause of this separation, or mutiny, as he represents it. The dearth of corn of which the citizens complain did not occur at this time; the present cause of complaint arose of the severe laws of debtor and creditor, which while all the wealth was in the hands of the patricians, enabled them to oppress with cruel severity those plebeians who had been compelled to become their debtors, and who were consequently liable to be claimed as their slaves. And it was on this occasion that Menenius Agrippa related the celebrated fable of the Belly and the Members, and also that Tribunes of the people were first appointed. The complaint was not of power usurped, or arbitrarily used by an aristocracy privileged by birth so much as of “the rich men who had driven them out of the city . . . and that they were hurt with continual wars and fighting in defence of the rich man's goods.” It was the moneyed aristo<*>racy by which they were oppressed. And though the old man, in the moral of his fable, likens the nourishment afforded by the belly to the wholesome counsels of the Senate, yet the fable itself rather describes the possessors of wealth, who were said “to send it out again for the nourishment of other parts.”’— Wordsworth (Hist. Plays, i, 115): Courtenay's objection [to the locality of this scene] is obviated when we consider that Shakespeare has plainly intended to combine the two causes of insurrection. See the First Citizen's speech in this scene (ll. 81-87). In point of fact, according to Livy, when the second insurrection took place (through want of corn) Menenius was dead.—Verity (Student's Sh.): This first scene is a singularly comprehensive introduction. It shows us the political conditions at Rome, focuses interest straightway (l. 11) on the protagonist of the tragedy, and illuminates his character and motives in a few phrases which practically epitomise what ensues. ‘Chief enemy to the people’; ‘he pays himself with being proud’; ‘he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud,’ these are key-notes, ‘leading motives,’ introduced in the overture and repeated at intervals through the piece. And when Coriolanus himself appears we have an immediate example of his pride and enmity to the people, and a foreshadowing of that military prowess which accentuates the pitiful tragedy of his end.—E. K. Chambers: The object of the first Act is the glorification of Coriolanus. This is a tragedy; that is, essentially, the story of the failure and ruin of a soul which is at least greatly planned. In order then that we may be affected tragically the element of greatness in Coriolanus must first be established. Coriolanus is, in his way, an idealist; he idealizes himself as a man of honour. And in the war with Corioles, which occupies scenes iv. to x. of the Act, our attention is directed to those qualities in him which justify that ideal, his valour and magnanimity on the field of battle. He is the ‘flower of warriors.’ His defects are lightly touched, not yet emphasized.

1. Citizen. Before . . . speake Delius (Jahrbuch, v, 268): The Plebeians, in their turbulence and among themselves, can only give vent to their lust for revolt in a form of prose, which in the mouth of the first Citizen, as spokesman of the crowd, has a somewhat euphuistic tinge. Menenius, who as chief humorist of the drama in another scene speaks in prose, must here, as intercessor, guard his cultured authority when confronting the great rabble and speak in blank verse, in which also the spokesman citizen replies in his dispute with Menenius.

Caius Martius Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): The name is so given in North's Plutarch (1579). The deplorable habit of ‘emending’ and modernizing is evident in Rowe's change to Marcius, ever since followed, obscuring Shakespeare's source for this and other forms of spelling. [Reference to the Text. Notes will show that Theobald, and not Rowe, is responsible for the change in spelling. Theobald's classical knowledge evidently did not permit the use of the Latin adjective Martius (of, or belonging to, Mars) when the name of the Latin gens Marcius was required. In a letter to Warburton, dated Feb. 12, 1729-30, he says: ‘The succeeding editions will do well, I think, to write Marcius, for the family name was Μάπκιος, and not Martius, a Marte’ (Nichols, ii, 478). It is true that the name is uniformly spelt Martius by North, and so also by Holland in his translation of Livy. Possibly this was due to Italian influence on the English spelling of Latin names at that period.—Ed.]

a Verdict Craigie (N. E. D., s. v. 3.): A decision or opinion pronounced or expressed upon some matter or subject; a finding, conclusion, or judgment.— Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): Perhaps a sly hit at trial by jury.

the Patricians good Farmer: ‘Good’ is here used in the mercantile sense. So, Touchstone in Eastward Hoe: ‘—known good men, well monied.’ [Malone adds, as another example oſ this use of the word: ‘Antonio's a good man.’—Mer. of Ven., I, iii, 12. According to Schmidt (Lex.) the present passage, and that quoted by Malone, are the only examples of ‘good’ used in this restricted sense.—Ed.]

one The Text. Notes show how universal is the agreement that the change by the editor of F3 of ‘one’ to on was necessary.—W. A. Wright says: ‘On the other hand, in III, i, 172, “Where one” is printed in the Folios “Whereon.” That on and “one” were pronounced very much alike appears from such printers' errors. as well as from Love's Labour's Lost, IV, ii, 85, 86: “Master Parson, quasi pers one An if one should be pierced, which is the one?”’—Miss C. Porter, a staunch advocate for retention of all F1 readings, maintains that ‘the text may be explained as meaning, what the authority of law surfeits the one side with would relieve us. He carries on the argument to this effect. If they would yeelde us but the superfluitie of grain before it spoiled they might be supposed not to intend to wrong us; since they do not, it must be concluded that they intend to gain by wronging us. It is all arranged by law to surfeit the one side with what they take by means of law or authority.’ Miss Porter also calls attention to the merging of the two uprisings, as in Plutarch, into a single one by Shakespeare. See notes by Courtenay and Wordsworth, l. 2 ante.—Ed.

yeelde vs but W. A. Wright: ‘But’ qualifies not ‘the superfluity,’ but the verb ‘yield.’ If they would only yield us the superfluity while it were wholesome, and not when it is good for nothing.

while it were For this construction see Abbott (§§ 302, 367).

guesse Case (Arden Sh.): That is, think. Schmidt gives two other instances of ‘guess’ in this sense from 1 Henry VI: II, i, 29, and Henry VIII: II, i, 47. The N. E. D. gives several early English (no Elizabeth) examples; it quotes a 1400 Prymer (Early Eng. Text Soc.), 64: ‘Gessist thou not (Vulg. putasne) that a deed man shall live agen?’

they thinke we are too deere Johnson: That is, they think that the charge of maintaining us is more than we are worth.

the obiect of our misery Collier (Notes and Emend., etc., ed. i, p. 346): The earliest manuscript emendation [in Coriolanus] cannot be called a necessary one; but still it seems, taking the context into account, a considerable improvement, and may, perhaps, be admitted on the evidence of the MS. Corrector. It occurs in the speech of 1. Cit.: ‘—the abjectness of our misery.’ For abjectness the common reading has been ‘object’; that is to say, the sight of our misery; but the speaker has talked of the ‘leanness’ of the poor citizens of Rome, and he follows it up by the mention of the abjectness of their misery. This substitution could hardly have proceeded from the mere taste or discretion of the old corrector, but still it is hardly wanted. [Collier nevertheless adopts it in his ed. iii.—Ed.]—Anon. (New Readings, etc., Blackwood's Maga., Sep., 1853, p. 319): In his first emendation the MS. Corrector betrays his ignorance of the right meaning of words. The term ‘object,’ which nowadays is employed rather loosely in several acceptations, is used by Shakespeare in this passage in its proper and original signification. For ‘object’ we should, nowadays, say spectacle. But the Corrector cannot have known that this was the meaning of the word, otherwise he surely

never would have been so misguided as to propose the term abjectness in its place. ‘This substitution,’ says Mr Collier, ‘could hardly have proceeded from the mere taste or discretion of the old corrector.’ No, truly; but it proceeded from his want of taste, his want of discretion, and his want of knowledge.—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, p. 207): ‘Hardly wanted,’ indeed! How could ‘object’ be mistaken for abjectness? Their misery was the object which served by comparison to make the Patricians the more satisfied with their own abundance, and thus the sufferings of the Plebs were a gain to them. What should we gain by the adoption of this needless piece of pragmatic interference? The correctors never think of the poet, but of their own ingenuity in finding faults where none exist.—Wordsworth (Historical Plays, p. 115) omits the words ‘the object of our misery’ on the ground that he ‘suspects the reading.’—Leo (Sh. Notes, p. 18) says: ‘If we mentally supply which is before “the object’ no misunderstanding is possible.’ [A remark which clearly indicates that Leo quite misunderstood the passage and its bearing on what precedes and follows it.—Ed.]—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): ‘Object’ in the sense object of sight is quite ordinary modern English. We speak of ‘object- lessons,’ ‘of writing with the eye upon the object,’ &c. The peculiarity here is its use in this sense with preposition ‘of.’ The only other instance of this in Shakespeare is Tro. & Cress., II, ii, 41: ‘And reason flies the object of all harm.’

an inuentory to particularize W. A. Wright: That is, to point out in detail, and more emphatically. The less we have, the more they have.—Deighton: Our suffering serves, by way of contrast, to make them mindful of their own wellfed condition; each particular of our want corresponding to some particular of their abundance.

Pikes . . . Rakes Warburton: It was Shakespeare's design to make this fellow quibble all the way. But time, who has done greater things, has here stifled a miserable joke, which was then the same as if it had been now wrote, ‘Let us now revenge this with forks, ere we become rakes,’ for pikes then signified the same as forks do now. So Jewel, in his translation of his Apology, turns ‘Christianos ad furcas condemnare’ to ‘To condemn Christians to the pikes.’— Johnson: It is plain that, in our author's time, we had the proverb, ‘as lean as a rake.’ Of this proverb the origin is obscure. Rækel, in Islandick, is said 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 hazards the conjecture that ‘rake,’ as used in the proverb, may be in the sense of ‘a dissolute man, a man worn out with disease and debauchery.’ His own objection, that this sense is later than the proverb, is shown to be well founded, as the earliest use of ‘rake,’ a dissolute man, is given by the N. E. D. as 1653.— Skeat (Dict., s. v. (2)) gives its derivation as from M. E. rakel-rash. According to Skeat the Icelandic reikall means simply wandering, unsettled, and has not the restricted meaning given by Johnson.—Ed.]—Steevens, in reference to Johnson's

application of the proverb to the condition of a cur dog, says: ‘It may be so: and yet I believe the proverb owes its origin simply to the thin taper form of the instrument made use of by hay-makers.’ In support of this he quotes: ‘As lene was his hors as is a rake.’—Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, ed. Tyrwhitt, v. 281; and also: ‘His body lean and meagre as a rake.’—Spenser, Faerie Queene, Bk II, cant. xi, verse xxii, l. 2.—Deighton: In ‘rakes’ the comparison is to the bones of an animal showing below the skin as distinctly as the teeth of a rake; a comparison made clear by a passage from A Pleasant Dispute between a Coach and a Sedan, 1636, quoted by Malone on Lear, III, vi, 78: ‘. . . The dogges are as leane as rakes; you may tell all their ribbes lying by the fire.’ [Deighton here, I think, but furnishes another example of the phrase. The appearance of the ribs as a mark of extreme emaciation need not necessarily be compared to that of the teeth of a rake. Launcelot says: ‘I am famished in his service; you may tell every finger I have on my ribs.’—Mer. of Ven., II, ii, 114.—Ed.]

All Malone: This speech, I believe, ought to be assigned to the First Citizen.—Dyce (ed. i.): The context seems to favour this alteration. [Dyce in his ed. ii. records Malone's conjecture, but omits his agreement thereto.—Ed.]

a very dog Gordon: He means pitiless, heartless. Compare: ‘He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog.’—Two Gentlemen, II, iii, 10-12. It is singular how ſew good words Shakespeare has for the dog.

what For other examples of ‘what’=that which, see Abbott (§ 252).

he did it to please his Mother Miss Latham (Sh. Soc. Trans., 1887

92, p. 69): This, the first mention of Volumnia, immediately follows that of Coriolanus, as though to link the two characters indissolubly together, and when we examine the great tragedy we find them so closely connected that any study of the one must needs include the other. Volumnia's daily thoughts, her joys and sorrows, the whole work of her life are so centred in her only son that she can hardly be said to have any existence independent of him, while if he has a separate life of his own, most of his faults, and many of his gifts, are either inherited from her, or have been developed under her training, so that his character may truly be said to be rooted in hers.

to be partly proud Capell (I, pt i, p. 80) maintains that the reading of F1 and of Hanmer (see Text. Notes) are both ‘faulty’; ‘for,’ he continues, ‘waving other objections that might be made to them, neither of them agrees with the context. The speaker sets out with ascribing all Marcius’ actions to pride; he is check'd for it by his mates, but adheres to his text in his answer, with this slight difference—that perhaps indeed the pleasing his mother might be some motive to Marcius, but his pride was his chief; and then proceeds to set forth the degree of his pride—that it was a full balance to all his virtues, however great they might be. And this being the Author's intention in the speeches refer'd to, it follows that “partly” must have stood in the place it now occupies [that is, preceding “to please”] and was mov'd out of it by mistake of the printer's.’— Staunton: This may mean, partly to please his mother, and because he was proud; but we believe the genuine text would give us ‘and to be portly proud.’ [Leo, in his edition published four years after Staunton's, also makes this same conjecture, quoting in corroboration of this use of portly: ‘Rudely thou wrongest my deare heart's desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride.’ Spenser, Amoretti, verse v.—Ed.]—Dyce (ed. ii.): Lettsom conjectures pertly; that is, openly, clearly.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke: We think the sentence is one of those clumsily expressed sentences which Shakespeare purposely and characteristically places in the mouths of his common speakers: the phrase here meaning, ‘he did it chiefly to please his mother and partly for his own pride's sake.’ The man has just before said of Coriolanus, ‘he pays himself with being proud.’—Abbott (§ 420) gives other examples of a like transposition of the adverb.

to the altitude of his vertue Steevens quotes as a similar metaphor, ‘He's traitor to the height.’—Henry VIII: I, ii, 214, but this is not, I think, quite parallel.—Case (Arden Sh.) more correctly explains that ‘the speaker, of course, means to say, “brave man as he is, he is quite as proud as he is brave.”’—Ed.

a Vice Warburton: ‘Vice’ is here used inaccurately for crime. For a vice, that is, a defect in his nature, it was, by the confession of the speaker.

other side A'th City W. A. Wright: The people had At this time retired to the Mons Sacer, which was About three miles from the city Along the Via Nomentana. The other side of the city would, therefore, be the part beyond the Tiber. But in All probability Shakespeare had in his mind the topography of London And not of Rome, And the Tower was to him the Capitol. [Is it not passing strange that Apparently Wright has inadvertently failed to recall his own stage-direction At the beginning of this scene—‘Rome: A Street’—and has changed its locality to the Mons Sacer?—Ed.]

To th'Capitoll Bayfield (p. 184): The versification of this play, which is not surpassed by Any other in delicacy And variety, has suffered perhaps more than Any As it passed through the hands of those responsible for its present condition. The misdivisions Are extraordinarily numerous. [Bayfield then gives ‘eight out of 100 examples of th' before A consonant, practically All of which Are unpronounceable without introducing the vowel which it is sought to elide. Before a vowel we get th' 27 times, And before the Aspirate, which must be dropped, 7 times.’ On the subject of these elisions in his Introduction, p. vii, he says: ‘Modern editors habitually Alter th' to the, th' Art to thou'rt, And (naturally not daring to leave it) y'are to you're, retaining the rest; but this is An Arbitrary And partial method of procedure which does not solve the problem or even touch it, And is not justified by Any sound principle of criticism. At the same time the retention of All the Abbreviations except th' indicates An imperfect recognition of what was Shakespeare's ideal of dramatic verse—the ideal At which he was Aiming Almost from the first, And to which in the end he Absolutely Attained in the incomparable versification of Ant. & Cleo. Yet Attention has Actually been drawn to “the irregular verse of the later plays.” The result is that the most perfect of All dramatic verse has been systematically travestied; its native freedom is hampered As by fetters. As left by their Author, the measures moved with the lightness And ease and rhythmic grace of A beautiful And elaborate dance, And they made music to the ear. Read As we must read them, they stump About As it were in clogs; their grace is gone And the music is “beastly dumb'd.” Consequently, the enjoyment of A play At home is marred by An irritation which grows in proportion to the beauty of the verse that is distorted, And in the theatre the Actors Are compelled to vex our ears And their own with halting measures that have no balance, and to deliver much of the finest of All drama in A jargon that is unworthy both of the Author And themselves. This cobbled patch work is given to us for Shakespeare's verse As he was satisfied to leave it, And while it is proclaimed with simple truth that he is the world's greatest poet, it has been found necessary to beg us to make Allowances—yes, to make Allowances for the numerous imperfections of his versification!’

Menenius Agrippa S. Lee (Caxton Sh. Introd., p. xxxii.): Shakespeare follows Plutarch in Assigning to Menenius ‘many good persuasions And gentle requests made to the people on the behalf of the senate,’ And puts in his mouth the ‘notable tale’ of the belly's rebellion Against the members of the human body [sic. ‘Aliquando dormitat,’ etc.—Ed.]. But Menenius disappears from Plutarch's page As soon As he has drawn his moral from this Apologue. He retires As soon As he has proved in parable that the senate is to the body politic what the belly is to the human frame. Shakespeare prolongs Menenius' history to the end of the piece. Throughout the tragedy he is A level-headed observer of events. He criticizes their progress with ironical detachment After the manner of A chorus in classical tragedy. His place in the dramatic scheme resembles that of Enobarbus in Antony & Cleopatra, And the turn of events involves him in Almost As melancholy A fate. He is no bitter partisan, And Although Associated with the patricians has the reputation of loving the people. He jests As complacently At what he conceives to be his own failings As At those which he detects in others. His ironical wit sharpens the zest of his sagacious comments until the cruel catastrophe of Coriolanus's repudiation. Then his spirit breaks And despair overwhelms him. There is no more pathetic episode in the tragedy than Coriolanus' dismissal of him, practically unheard, from the Volscian camp. Not the newly crowned Prince Hal's rejection of his old Associate Falstaff inflicts A deeper wound on the reader's, or the spectator's, heart. [For various estimates of the character of Menenius Agrippa, see Dram. Person., s. v. ante.—Ed.]

What work's . . . I pray you Beeching (Falcon Sh.): Notice the introduction of blank verse to mark the dignity of the Patrician.

2 Cit. Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 81): A very little reflexion upon the preceding speeches of the second And first citizen will shew At once the propriety of the change in this line [see Text. Notes]. . . . The same Alteration is continu'd in this edition As low As the end of this scene, And for the same reasons.—Malone, without referring, however, to Capell's note, says likewise that the Assignment of this And the subsequent speeches to 2 Cit. Are manifestly erroneous And should Be

given to 1 Cit. ‘The second,’ he adds, ‘is rather friendly to Coriolanus.’—Knight: We adhere to the original copy for the precise reason which Malone gives for departing from it. The first Citizen is a hater of public men—the second, of public measures; the first would kill Coriolanus—the second would repeal the laws relating to corn and usury. He says not one word against Coriolanus. We are satisfied that it was not Shakspere's intention to make the low brawler against an individual argue so well with Menenius in the matter of the ‘kingly crowned head,’ etc. This speaker is of a higher cast than he who says: ‘Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price.’—Dyce, who also mistakenly attributes the change of text to Malone, gives the latter part of the foregoing note by Knight and declares that this ‘view of the Citizen's character is quite at variance with the description of it which, according to Knight's own text, Menenius presently gives,’ [ll. 164-169]. In conclusion Dyce adds: ‘In fact, the passage just cited serves to prove that Malone was well warranted in altering the prefix here and subsequently.’—White likewise credits Malone with this alteration, remarking that ‘he seems to have done well in trusting rather to Shakespeare's consistency of characterization than to the typographical accuracy of this very incorrectly printed play, upon a point in which error might so easily be committed.’—Hudson, on the other hand, in his ed. i. agrees with Knight that Malone's reasons for varying from the original are not sufficient to warrant a change of text. In his ed. ii. Hudson recants completely without, however, mentioning his former opinion, and possibly thereto directed by Wright, assigns the change rightfully to Capell, falls in line with the majority in accepting this, and characterises the Folio text as ‘clearly wrong.’ —Ed.

Our busines . . . to th'Senat MacCallum (524): Hardly a line in [Plutarch's] description of this movement which the plebeians conducted so moderately and sagaciously to a successful end has passed into the picture of Shakespeare. He ignores the reasonableness of their cause, the reasonableness of their means, and fails to perceive the essential efficiency and steadiness of their character, though all these things are expressed or implied in Plutarch's narrative. This episode in which the younger contemporary of Nero favours the people, the elder contemporary of Pym summarily dismisses, and substitutes for it another far less important, in which they appear in no very creditable light, but which had nothing to do with the institution of the Tribunate, and occurred in consequence of the dearth only after the capture of Corioli. ‘Now those busie pratlers . . . spread abroad false tales and rumours against the Nobilitie, that they in revenge of the people had practised and procured the extreme dearthe among them.’ This circumstance, combined with the still later demand for a distribution of corn, Shakespeare transposes, and makes the surely rather inappropriate cause of the appointment of the Tribunes. Inappropriate, that is, to what the logic of the situation requires, and to what the sagacity of the traditional plebs would solicit. They ask for bread and they get a magistrate. But not inappropriate to the unreasoning demands of a frenzied proletariat. Many parallels might be cited from the French revolutions. But this is just an instance of Shakespeare's inability to conceive a popular rising in other terms than the outbreak of a mob.

poore Suters . . . strong breaths A diligent search through Ray's English Proverbs; Bohn's Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs; Lean's Collectanea of Proverbs and Folklore; Heywood's 800 Epigrams on 800 Proverbs; Florio's First Frutes; Florio's Second Frutes; the Indices to the twelve series of Notes & Queries has failed to trace even a parallel to this saying put in the mouth of the 2 Citizen. I am therefore reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is original with Shakespeare; I say reluctantly, since were another example forthcoming we might be led to an interpretation of its exact meaning better than that thus far offered.—Schmidt (Lex.), under the meaning of ‘strong,’ of evil odor, quotes the present line, as does also Bradley (N. E. D.).—Case (Arden Sh.) likewise so explains this phrase, saying that the word is here used in a double sense. Now, in spite of this formidable array, I cannot but think that ‘strong’ is here used only in direct opposition to ‘poor.’ A suitor with an evil-smelling breath would hardly be likely to commend either himself or his suit; but one who realises that he has a poor, or weak gift of oratory, would have need to have a strong, or a large amount of, breath to carry out his argument. Schmidt cites All's Well, V, ii, 5: ‘I am now, sir, muddied in fortune's mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure’; but this is merely an example of ‘strong’ in the sense of evil-smelling, and is in no way parallel with the present line. Case quotes other passages both in this play and Jul. Cæs. wherein reference is made to the malodorous breaths of the multitude. An ounce of civet, good apothecary!—Ed.

for your wants . . . this dearth Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 81): The author has certainly drop'd some few words, in his haste of composing, that are wanting to introduce with propriety the sentiment that comes next after ‘dearth’ in the following line; what seems to have been his intention may be given in these words: ‘As for your wants, your suffering in this dearth,—if revenge for them be your aim in this rising, you will miss of it; for you may as well,’ &c., down to ‘impediment,’ [l. 74]. And as for the dearth itself, The gods, not the patricians, make it. But if this was the author's drift in the passage before us (and it will be diffi

cult to assign any other) his haste, as was said before, has betray'd him into a larger omission than the law of good writing either does admit of or should do.

cracking . . . your impediment Malone: So in Othello, ‘I have made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop,’ [V, ii, 263].

your impediment W. A. Wright: That is, the impediment you make. For this objective use of the possessive pronoun see Psalm cix, 3 (Prayer Book): ‘They take now my contrary part’; that is, take part against me. And Jeremiah, ix, 8: ‘One speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait’; that is, layeth in wait for him. See also King John, ‘Vex'd with thy impediment,’ II, i, 336.

impediment Abbott (§ 467) in reference to the scansion of this line says: ‘I in the middle of a trisyllable, if unaccented, is frequently dropped, or so nearly as to make it a favorite syllable in trisyllabic feet.’

The Gods . . . and Browne (p. 17), under syllabic expansion for absolute metric exactness, includes this line, where, accordingly, ‘gods’ must be pronounced ‘godse.’ This is, of course, only for the printed words or to satisfy the fingercounting prosodists.—Abbott (§ 486) suggests that ‘“gods” is probably prolonged by emphasis, and the second “the” is not accented.’—Ed.

o'th State For this elision of e before a consonant, see note by Bayfield, l. 50 ante.

Care for vs . . . yet Hudson (ed. i.): We keep to the pointing of the original, which, to our mind, makes the sense much more coherent and clear.

famish, and Abbott (§ 95): ‘And’ (in old Swedish aen is used for ‘and,’ ‘if,’ and ‘even’) emphatically used for ‘also,’ ‘even,’ ‘and that too.’ We still use ‘and that’ to give emphasis and call attention to an additional circumstance, e. g., ‘He was condemned and that unheard.’ This construction is most common in participial phrases. The ‘that’ is logically unnecessary and is omitted by Shakespeare.

Make Edicts . . . the poore MacCallum (p. 529): Shakespeare not only completely suppresses the remarkable secession to the Mons Sacer, but barely mentions the social grievances that led to it. The Citizen says, indeed, of the Patricians [ll. 83-86]; but this is a mere passing remark, and no stress is laid on these the real causes of the discontent, in comparison with the dearth, which for the rest seems to end with the Coriolun campaign, when there is, as Cominius promises, a ‘common distribution’ of the spoils. Now the dearth is represented as a mere disastrous accident for which no one is responsible, and for which there is no remedy save prayer—or such a foray as presently took place. Menenius expressly says so [ll. 74-76]. It is alleged, no doubt, by the mutineers that the ‘store houses are crammed with grain,’ but there is no confirmation of this in the play, and the way in which ‘honest’ Menenius reports the rumour, and Marcius, who is never less than honest, receives it, implies that it is mere tittle tattle and gossip of the chimney corner.

Edicts for Vsurie Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): The grievance, according to Plutarch, of the first insurrection, the one that took place before the siege of Corioli, was that ‘the Senate did favour the rich against the people, who did complain of the sore oppression of usurers, of whom they borrowed money. For those that had little, were yet spoiled of that little they had by their creditors, for lack of ability to pay the usury.’ This is the basis for Shakespeare's Edicts for Usurie.

piercing Statutes Rolfe: Schmidt is in doubt, whether this is = mortifying, revolting to the feelings, or = sweeping; entering and affecting all the interests of the people.’ It may be simply = sharp, severe.—E. J. White (p. 405): A statute is generally defined as a law enacted by the legislative power, or a written expression of the legislative will, in the form necessary to make it the law of the state or country where it is to obtain. The Poet many times speaks of ‘biting statutes’ and ‘piercing statutes,’ showing that he had the lawyers’ regard for such strict legislative provisions as made it hard upon the individual citizen, when enforced, with the Poet's sympathy for the individual in any hardship that he suffered, even though it resulted from the enforcement of the law. Speaking of the repeal of such statutes as were enacted for the benefit of the poor, the idea is that such acts were rendered migratory by inconsistent provisions, by which an implied repeal of a previous statute may be effected. The legal observations in these lines are made in strict accord with the struggle then going on, between the plebeians and the patricians, for supremacy, and show an accurate knowledge not only of the legal requirements of legislative enactments but also of the historical facts existing at this period of the world's history.

A pretty Tale In the earliest known version of the Fables of Bidpai, The Morall Philosopie of Doni, translated by Sir Thomas North, 1570 (ed. Jacobs, p. 64), this fable of the belly and members is related, and it is prefaced with these words: ‘That noble Romaine that fought and laboured to bring the people and communaltie to loue their Magistrates and superiours, tolde them a pretie tale (to write it happilye in this Booke for him that knoweth it not) howe the handes were angrie with the bodie.’ It is, however, not necessary to transcribe the rest of the fable as there given; it is in no way like to that in other collections. The writer thus concludes: ‘With this pretie tale he made the people sensibly to vnderstand what became them, and how they should behave themselves to their superiours.’ We have no possible means of knowing whether Shakespeare either knew of or had ever seen this particular version of the story, but that it should be therein twice referred to as ‘a pretty tale’ and that same phrase be used by Shakespeare are points which would seem to indicate at least a recollection of this translation by North.—Ed.

To scale't Theobald: Thus all the editions, but without any manner of sense that I can find out. The Poet must have wrote as I have corrected the text [see Text. Notes], and then the meaning will be plainly this: ‘Perhaps you may have heard my tale already, but for all that, I'll venture to make it more stale and familiar to you by telling it over again.’ And nothing is more common than the verb in this sense with our three capital dramatic Poets. To begin with our own Author: ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety,’ Ant. & Cleo., II, ii, 240; ‘Were I a common laugher, or did use To stale with ordinary oaths my love,’ Jul. Cæs., I, ii, 72; ‘imitations Which out of use, and staled by other men Begin his fashion,’ Jul. Cæs., IV, i, 38. [To these examples from Shakespeare of ‘stale’ used in this sense Theobald adds four others, one of these from Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, and three from Beaumont and Fletcher, Beggar's Bush, Queen of Corinth, and Wit at Several Weapons.—Ed.]—Warburton: Mr Theobald alters it to stale't. And for a good reason, because he can find no sense, he says, in the common reading. For as good a reason I, who can, have restored the old one to its place, ‘To scale't,’ signifying to weigh, examine, and apply it. The author uses it again, in the same sense, in this very play: ‘Scaling his present bearing with his past,’ [II, iii, 261]. And so Fletcher, The Maid in the Mill: ‘What, scale my invention beforehand?’ [ed. Dyce, ix, 259, where ‘scale’ is printed stale and whereon the editor has the following note: ‘So Sympson.—Both the folios “scale”; and so the editors of 1778. The same misprint occurs in the old copies of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, I, i, and has been carefully retained in the three latest editions of the great dramatist, though Theobald had long ago corrected the passage, and though Gifford in a most decisive note had proved that the true reading is stale.’ (See Note by Steevens and Gifford's comment thereon, supra.)

—Ed.]—Johnson: Neither of Dr Warburton's examples afford a sense congruous to the present occasion. In the passage quoted to ‘scale’ may be to weigh and compare, but where do we find that to ‘scale’ is to apply? If we scale the two critics, I think Theobald has the advantage.—Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 81) characterises Theobald's alteration as ‘a most certain correction,’ and remarks that ‘“scale't,” i. e., weigh or examine it, is neither pertinent to the matter in hand nor suitable to the speaker.’—Steevens: To ‘scale’ is to disperse. The word is used in the North. If emendation was at all necessary, Theobald's is as good a one as could be proposed. The sense of the old reading is: Though some of you have heard the story, I will spread it yet wider, and impart it to the rest. A measure of wine spilt is called ‘a scal'd pottle of wine’ in Dekker's comedy, The Honest Whore, 1635. So in The Hystorie of Clyomen, a play published in 1599: ‘[Ah sirrah, now] the hugy heapes of cares that lodged in my minde Are scaled from their nestling-place, and pleasures passage find,’ [Peele's Works, ed. Dyce, iii, 78. Steevens gives three other examples of ‘scale’ used in the sense to disperse from Holinshed and from the Glossary to Douglas's Translation of Virgil; and in later editions he added several more. Gifford, who seldom let slip an opportunity to gird at Steevens, says, in a note on the line, ‘I'll not stale the jest By my relation’ (Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, IV, ii, p. 203). ‘This is one of a thousand instances which might be brought to prove that the true reading in Coriolanus is: “To stale't a little more.” . . . Steevens prefers scale, which he proves from a variety of learned authorities to mean scatter, disperse, spread; to make any of them, however, suit his purpose, he is obliged to give an unfaithful version of the text: “Though some of you have heard the story, I will spread it yet wider, and diffuse it among the rest!” There is nothing of this in Shakespeare; and, indeed, I cannot avoid looking on his long note as a feeble attempt to justify a palpable error of the press, at the cost of taste and sense.’ Gifford, in his edition of Jonson published ten years later, in a note on the line in Every Man in His Humour, ‘To stale himself in all societies’ (I, iv, p. 42), returns again to the attack with the words: ‘So the word is used by Shakespeare, and, indeed, by every writer of his age. By a very common oversight it is printed scale in Coriolanus, which has happily furnished occasion for much perverse ingenuity to justify the poet's adoption of a word which he would steadily have rejected.’—Ed.]—Mason (Comments, etc., p. 245): I believe Theobald is right. In the passage which Warburton quotes from The Maid in the Mill it is evident that stale is the right reading, and that scale was introduced in that passage, as I believe it was into this, by a mistake of the printer's. Steevens has proved beyond doubt that to scale meant formerly to disperse; but the remark of Menenius, that though perhaps his audience had heard it before, he would venture to tell his tale again, convinces me that stale is the true reading.—Malone, who retains the Folio reading, apparently accepts Steevens's interpretation, to disperse; and merely mentions Theobald's change, stale.—Boswell: ‘To scale’ means also to weigh, to consider. If we understand it in the sense of to separate, as when it is said to ‘scale the corn,’ it may have the same metaphorical signification as to discuss; but Theobald's emendation is so slight, and affords so clear a meaning, that I should be inclined to adopt it.— Horne Tooke, who is not always a very trustworthy authority on matters philological, in his Ἔρεα Ρτεπόεντα [Winged Words], or The Diversions of Purley, makes reference to the present passage and Steevens's note thereon, and for the

latter reason only is entitled to a hearing; after giving a list of the various significations of the word ‘scale’ in English and other languages Tooke declares that all of these have but one meaning in common: viz., ‘Divided, Separated. The tale of Menenius was “scaled a little more” by being divided into particulars and degrees, told more circumstantially and at length. That, I take, to be Shakespeare's meaning by the expression, and not the staling or diffusing of the tale, which, if they had heard it before, could not have been done by his repetition. For Menenius does not say that some of them had heard it before; that word some is introduced by Mr Steevens in his note merely to give a colour to his explanation of “diffusing it among the rest.” Clyomen's cares were scaled (i. e., separated) from their nestling-place’ (ed. 1857, p. 482).—Nares (Glossary, s. v. Scale): To weigh as in scales, to estimate aright. I am convinced that this sense, which was given by Warburton, conveys the true meaning of the following passages: ‘By this is your brother saved, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the correct [corrupt] deputy scaled.’—Meas. for Meas., III, i, 266. [Here follows the present line.] In the following passage it is manifest: ‘Scaling his present bearing with his past,’ II, iii, 261, and this has the more force, as occurring soon after in the same play. That it does also mean to separate and fly off, as scales fly from heated metal, is proved by the passages which Mr Steevens cites for that purpose. The other passages adduced are hardly relevant, and the Scottish dialect will not often authorise English words.—Brockett (s. v. Scale): To spread abroad, to separate, to divide. [The present line quoted.] Nearly all the commentators have mistaken the meaning of ‘to scale't.’ I am quite satisfied that it was the author's intention to have the tale spread a little more minutely; or, as Horne Tooke better expresses it, to have it divided into more particulars and degrees, told more circumstantially and at length. If Archdeacon Nares, to borrow his own language, will ‘weigh as in scales, to estimate aright,’ Mr Lambe's observations on this passage, and on the means of acquiring a competent knowledge of the old English tongue (Notes on the Battle of Flodden), I entertain a hope that the learned author of the elaborate and valuable Glossary may not be indisposed to alter in more respects than one the article, To Scale, in a future edition.—Knight: It is necessary to see how Shakspere has used this verb [to scale] in other passages. In the second act Sicinius tells the citizens: ‘Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he's your fixed enemy.’ Dr Johnson explains this: ‘Weighing his past and present behaviour.’ This interpretation seems obvious and natural; and none of the commentators object to it with reference to this particular passage. But in Meas. for Meas., when the Duke explains his project to Isabella, he says, ‘by this . . . is the corrupt deputy scaled,’ [III, i, 266]. Upon this passage Johnson says: ‘To scale the deputy may be to reach him, or it may be to strip him.’ Here he differs from his interpretation of the passage in Coriolanus. But surely ‘the corrupt deputy’ may be ‘scaled’ in the same way that the bearing of Coriolanus is ‘scaled.’ We have precisely the same meaning in the Scriptures—‘Weighed in the balance, and found wanting.’ If this interpretation be good for two of the passages, why not for a third, that of the present passage before us? Menenius will venture to weigh, to try the value, of the ‘pretty tale’ a little more; though they may have heard it, he will again scale it. . . . Horne Tooke's explanation of all these passages appears to us somewhat fanciful, and assumes that Shakspere uses the same word in different places under different meanings that can only be reconciled by an

etymological reference.—Collier in his ed. i. follows the Folio reading and accepts (without acknowledgment) Steevens's interpretation that ‘scale’ here means to disperse, which, as he says, may be shown by many examples. This and the foregoing note by Knight called forth a characteristic ‘Remark’ from Dyce (p. 158) to the effect that such ‘blundering’ was ‘really piteous,’ since the correct reading, stale, had long since been restored by Theobald. Dyce then quotes in full Gifford's note on the line from Massinger's Unnatural Combat (see ante) and adds several other quotations wherein stale is used as a verb signifying to make common. Collier in his ed. ii. declares that he yields ‘to the weight of authority that “scale” of the old copies ought to be stale, although the corrected Folio of 1632 has no such emendation.’ He then concludes his note thus: ‘The Rev. Mr Dyce takes abundant pains to prove that to “stale” means to make stale, a point nobody disputed, the only question being whether scale was a misprint in the Folio, 1623; we think it was, and so treat it. In his enumeration of places, where to stale means to make stale or familiar, the Rev. Mr Dyce strangely forgot the most apposite instance, viz., in the address of the stationer to the reader, before Troilus and Cressida, 4 to 1609, where he says that it had never been “staled with the stage.” The recollection of this fact would have spared Mr Dyce a great deal of useless labour in making and repeating stale quotations.’—A Parthian shot which rendered his doughty antagonist quite speechless. Knight likewise, in his ed. ii, 1867, rather than again be accused of ‘piteous blundering,’ yielded to the weight of authority marshalled by Dyce and accepted Theobald's emendation.— Ed.—Halliwell (Dict. of Archaisms, s. v. Scale: To spread, to disperse abroad): The word occurs in Coriol., I, i, but is there a misprint for stale, as distinctly proved by Gifford, and still more elaborately in Dyce's Remarks, p. 158. The observations of Brockett on this passage, which he quite misunderstands, lead me to observe that, with a few trifling exceptions, the very worst annotations on Shakespeare have proceeded from the compilers of provincial glossaries, to whom the philological student would be more deeply indebted if they would conf<*>e themselves to the correct explanation of words in actual use without entering into subjects that require a distinct range of reading and study.—R. G. White: Some editors interpret ‘scale,’ to disperse; but granting the word that meaning, what sense does it afford in the place it holds? Menenius tells the people that it may be that they have heard his story, but, since it serves his purpose, he will venture to use it, old as it is, and make it even staler. Can there be the least doubt that Theobald was right in changing one letter and reading as in the text?—Joseph Hunter (ii, 117): There is no doubt that ‘scale’ has been used to denote the spreading abroad, dispersing; but then the sense does not suit the passage, while the sense of stale suits it admirably. Stale is also a word of which Shakespeare is fond, while no other instance can be produced of his having used the rare word ‘scale.’ All persons conversant with the written characters of any age know that there are letters which are easily confounded, the forms of the literal elements having been as little the subject of reflection and science as the sounds of which they are the representatives. This correction . . . is more than sufficiently obvious.— Walker (Crit., ii, 274): The corruption of t into c is frequent in old books. This vindicates Theobald's reading, defended by Gifford, Coriol., I, i, ‘to stale't’ for scale't. So Ace for ‘Ate,’ King John, II, i, fol. p. 4, col. 1, l. 6, ‘An Ace stirring him to bloud and strife.’ Cymbeline, III, ii, p. 381, col. 1, ult., vice versâ, ‘How many

store of Miles may we well rid.” . . . King Lear, IV, vi, p. 304, col. 1, l. 2, ‘Place sinnes with Gold,’ for Plate.—Leo (Coriolanus, ed., p. 119): To use the word [scale] here in the sense of to weigh [as does Knight] would seem exceedingly forced, and no one of the unlearned hearers of Menenius would understand it. As for disperse, the old Patrician may mean to do it a little more, since he supposes the tale to have been heard already by his audience, but it is more natural to understand to stale the already heard story, to make it as flat as every twice told story is.— Keightley (Expositor, p. 359): All attempts to make sense of ‘scale’ having been most complete failures, it only remains to read, with Theobald, stale.— Whitelaw (Coriolanus, ed. Gloss., p. 148) retains the Folio reading, but rejects both Steevens's interpretation, to disperse, and Knight's, to weigh; he goes somewhat further than Tooke in twisting a meaning out of ‘scale’ in the sense to separate, and thus renders it finally to discern. This new meaning he applies to the present passage, that from Meas. for Meas. already quoted by Nares, and the second passage in Coriol.; he thus concludes his elucidation: ‘This meaning suits all our three passages. The corrupt deputy will be unmasked, exposed, discerned. Menenius proposes to look a little more deeply into the inner meaning of the fable which all his hearers have heard, but not discerned before. The people have found, taking the behaviour of Coriolanus to pieces and scrutinizing it carefully, present and past together, that under the covering of compliance the old hate still rankles.’ [Gifford found grave fault with Steevens for a sophistication of the text to suit his own interpretation of the word ‘scale’; but what shall be said of such an utter perversion of the meaning and drift of the passage as this by Whitelaw? Schmidt, retaining the Folio reading in his text, declares that Whitelaw's explanation is to be preferred to all the others, and that the emendation stale is, therefore, to be unconditionally rejected, since it conveys an utterly false idea of what Menenius intends, which is not to render the fable more familiar, but to apply it more nearly to the present occasion, and make more striking its inner meaning. Schmidt is, I think, here misled by Whitelaw's flow of words and has not sufficiently paid attention to the sentence preceding. Menenius does not say that although his hearers may have heard the fable before, he intends to make it clearer to them, what he expressly states is: although you may have heard this, I am going to risk (‘venture’) to make it a little more familiar.—Ed.]— B. Nicholson (N. & Q., May 4, 1878, p. 342): Theobald's change is a very plausible one, the more that it substitutes a phrase more in use with and more understood by modern readers than the one that is somewhat antiquated. The rule, however, is beginning to be better understood (except by some emending critics) that a change which the emender believes to be an improvement is not to be adopted if the old reading gives a sufficient sense. Here, I believe, it gives not only a sufficient, but a better sense. To ‘scale a fish’ is to disfurnish, or clear, or clean it from its scales that it may be used by man. To ‘scale a piece of old and rusty metal’ is to clear off its rusty scaling, and so furbish it up anew for use or ornament. To ‘scale a bone,’ as practised by the old surgeons, was to scrape off the diseased surface, and so clear or clean it. The ordinary supposition (founded on the reading stale't) is that Menenius only intends to say that ‘he will tell the tale again.’ But he does not merely do this nor intend to do it. What he intends to do, and afterwards does do, is intimated in the words ‘but since it serves my purpose.’ In accordance therewith he not only tells the tale but also takes

off the covering and lays bare its meaning, or moral to their use, or, to use other synonyms, clears it, or shells it open to their apprehensions, that they may see and taste it in all its goodness. Nor are we without contemporary examples of a similar use of the word. A very pertinent one is to be found in James I.'s Dæmonologie, a work probably read by Shakspere, though the royal author may not be complimented on his collocation of terms: ‘The brightness of the Gospell . . . scaled [= cleared off] the cloudes of grosse errors, [i. e., all these gross clouds of error]’ (bk. ii, ch. vii, p. 53, first ed.). This example is sufficient for the reinstatement of ‘scale’ as Shakspere's word. Richardson in his Dictionary, following Skinner, also reads ‘scale’ in this passage, though he quotes it as showing that it always implies ‘dividing’ or ‘division’; as that here ‘the tale was scaled by being divided more into particulars and degrees’ more circumstantially and at length. [Richardson acknowledges Horne Tooke as his authority for this. —Ed]. The phrase in Meas. for Meas., ‘The corrupt deputy scaled’ (III, i, 241), he explains ‘by slipping off his covering of hypocrisy,’ and here I fully agree with him and claim this as a second or third example.—W. A. Wright follows Theobald's reading, remarking that from the Folio reading ‘no satisfactory sense has been extracted by the ingenuity of commentators,’ and after enumerating the various interpretations of Steevens and Boswell thus concludes: ‘Others explain it as signifying to strip the fable of its scale, or shell, or outer integument and to lay bare its meaning. But in this case there is no force in the words “a little more,” for Menenius had not attempted to expound it at all.’—Beeching (Falcon Ed.): ‘A little more’ goes better with stale [than ‘scale’], and scale occurs in II, iii, 261 in another sense.—Verity (Student's Sh.): Each interpretation [of the Folio reading] seems forced, and is open to the objection that scale means ‘to weigh’ in II, iii, 261. The reading stale gives admirable sense. Shakespeare uses the word in four other passages, e. g., in the famous lines on Cleopatra in Ant. & Cleo., II, ii, 240. It is noticeable of the three other examples of Shakespeare's use of stale (verb), two occur in Jul. Cæs. Thus of the five instances (if we may count this line) in his works four occur in the Roman plays founded on North's Plutarch, the actual diction of which Shakespeare so often retains. Possibly stale here and in the other places is an acho of something in North's Plutarch.—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.) accepts unhesitatingly Steevens's interpretation of ‘scale’ in the sense to disperse, citing his various examples in illustration. ‘It will be seen,’ Miss Porter adds, ‘that this word fits the context perfectly. Theobald's substitute obscures Shakespeare's use of a legitimate word now obsolete.’—Gordon: Out of ‘scale't,’ as out of anything, ingenuity may wrest a meaning, but probability declares it a misprint.—Craig (Arden Sh.): The present editor in the Oxford Shakespeare, 1891, retained the Ff reading, and nothing would induce him to follow Theobald; for though he admits it is not impossible that Shakespeare may have written stale't, it is bad editing to strike out what already makes excellent sense and to ‘re-write Shakespeare.’ Now with regard to the verb scale, first let us remember that Shakespeare often uses words in a somewhat licentious sense, bending them without scruple to one that pleases him. It is not impossible that the idea in his mind may have been to ventilate, air, disperse, with a sort of play on the sense ‘weigh in scales,’ a sense which the word bears in II, iii, 261 post. This sort of thing he has done often: Mid. N. Dream, I, i, 131, where it is most likely that he uses ‘between’ in the double sense of

pour out and allow, permit; and Lear, III, vii, 61, where ‘stelled’ appears to be used in the double senses of fixed or set, and starry. Steevens gives several examples of ‘scale’ in the sense of disperse. [Craig here quotes these as the concluding paragraph of his note. Craig's untimely death prevented the completion of his editing this play; that task was ably undertaken by R. H. Case, who here states that the Folio reading is retained solely out of deference to the intention of the original editor, and upon that intention remarks: ‘Mr Craig pleads for, and acts on, a good principle; but I feel bound to point out the words “some of” which Steevens slips into his interpretation to give it probability have no warrant from Shakespeare. Menenius speaks to all the citizens present: “Either you must confess yourselves . . . I shall tell you a pretty tale; it may be you have heard it,” and assumes his story to be possibly known to all. Hence, to enable him to scale or diffuse it, we should have to assume that in saying “it may be you have heard it,” he suddenly and pointedly addresses the First Citizen only; we cannot turn you into some of you to please Steevens.’ Bradley (N. E. D.） under the various meanings of the verb to scale does not include that first given by Steevens, to disperse; we may, therefore, conclude that the editor regarded such a restricted meaning as one that belonged to a language other than English. Bradley does, however, give two examples of scale in the sense of weighed, estimated, both of them from Shakespeare. The first, that line from Meas. for Meas. already quoted by several commentators in the foregoing notes, and the other that line still more often quoted from the second Act, third scene, of this play. Finally, the remarks of Hunter and, in particular, those of Walker in regard to the confusion which might easily arise from the similarity of the written characters t and c, would seem to be almost conclusive in favour of Theobald's emendation. As the majority have accepted this, after weighing all the evidence, it is likewise accepted by the present Ed.]

disgrace Johnson: ‘Disgraces’ are hardships, injuries. [Cotgrave, s. v. Disgrace, gives: ‘A disgrace; an ill fortune, hard lucke, defeature, check mate, mishap; also, uncomelinesse, unseemlinesse,’ . . . etc.—Ed.]

and't For and or an = if; see Abbott, § 101.

99. Men. There was a time, etc.] Douce (ii, 76): It is rather extraordinary that none of Shakespeare's commentators should have noticed the skilful manner in which he has diversified and expanded the well-known apologue of the belly and the members, the origin of which it may be neither unentertaining nor unprofitable to investigate, as well as the manner in which it has been used, and by whom. The composition has been generally ascribed to Menenius Agrippa; but as it occurs in a very ancient collection of Æsopian fables, there may be as much reason

for supposing it the invention of Æsop as there is for making him the parent of many others. The first person who has introduced Menenius as reciting this fable is Dionysius of Halicarnassus [25 B. C.], book vi. Then follow Livy, lib. ii.; Plutarch, in the life of Coriolanus; Florus, lib. i, cap. xxiii; each of whom gives it in his own manner. During the middle ages there appeared a collection of Latin fables in hexameter verse that has agitated the opinions of the learned to little purpose in their endeavors to ascertain the real name of the compiler or versifier. He has been called Romulus, Accius, and Salo. Nor is the time when he lived at all known. These fables are sometimes called anonymous, and have been published in various forms. An excellent edition by Nilant appeared in 1709, 12mo. Many of them were translated into French verse in the eleventh century by a French lady who calls herself Marie de France, in which form they have been happily preserved with many others extremely curious composed by the same ingenious person. . . . William Herman of Gouda, in Holland, reduced them into Latin prose about the year 1500, omitting some and adding others. The works of Romulus and Herman of Gouda have been published in a great variety of forms and languages, and constitute the set of Æsopian fables which commences with that of the cock and the precious stone; in all which the apologue of the belly and the members is to be found, and sometimes with considerable variation. . . . Nor was this fable unknown in the Eastern world. Syntipas, a Persian fabulist, has placed it in his work, published for the first time from a MS. at Moscow, by Matthæus, Lips. 1781, 8vo. Lafontaine has related it in his own inimitable manner; and, lastly, the editor of Baskerville and Dodsley's Æsop has given it in a style not inferior perhaps to that of any of his predecessors. [See, also, note by Douce, l. 144 supra.]—Jacobs (Fables of Æsop, i, 82): There is a reference in the Mahabharata (xiv, 688) to a fable similar to The Belly and Members which deserves closer attention, as it is, in many ways, the most remarkable fable in existence. A variant of it, or something very like it, was discovered six years ago by M. Maspero in a fragmentary papyrus, which he dates about the twentieth dynasty (c. 1250 B. C.). It is, consequently, the oldest fable in existence. . . . The fable, if fable it can be called, takes the form of a mock-trial, corresponding, as M. Gaston Paris has pointed out, to the débat which is so familiar in mediæval French literature. From this point of view the débat of Belly and Head affords us the earliest example of legal procedure extant. We again meet with the fable in the Upanishads, whence it doubtless got into the Mahabharata, and perhaps too into the Zend Yacna: Dispute of the Senses and the Soul. . . . A similar apologue existed among the Buddhists as we know from the fact that it exists in the Chinese Buddhistic work Avadanas (No. 105); it occurs also in the Pantschatantra: The Bird with Two Heads. I have also found a Jewish variant, though with a somewhat different moral: The Tongue and the Members. But there is a still more striking use of the fable by a Jew. There can be little doubt that St. Paul had a similar fable in his mind in the characteristic passage (1 Cor., xii, 12-26). The passage combines the Indian idea of the contest of the members with the Roman notion of the body politic. As this passage is the foundation of the doctrine of the Visible Church, and indirectly of the conception of the Body Politic (of which Hobbes made such quaint use), we cannot well overrate the importance of the fable on which it is founded. We have thus seen this fable of the Body and its Members with its Belgian motto, L'union fait la force, forming

part of the sacred literature of Egyptians and Chinese, of Brahmins, Buddhists and Magians, of Jews, and Christians. The reader must not, however, assume that these are all necessarily derived from one source. . . . The various versions [afford] an instructive example of how different nations may hit upon the very same apologue to illustrate the same idea. Carefully examined, the various versions may be reduced to four independent ones. The Egyptian débat stands by itself, the Brahmin Contest of Senses and Soul, occurring in the Upanishads, recurs in the Indian epic, in the Persian scripture, and possibly through the latter, in Jewish commentaries, and may thence have influenced St. Paul. The lost Buddhist apologue of The Bird with Two Heads found its way to China, and was received into the Bidpai literature. The Roman fable is remarkable as being the only fable of its kind in Latin literature which can claim to be current among the Romans. It occurs late, and may have been interpolated by Livy, like so much of his work. But, on the whole, I am inclined to regard it as a genuine Roman folk-fable and another instance of the sporadic use of the fable . . . by nations who have not otherwise shown a turn towards that form of the apologue. The whole enquiry ought to make us careful in the future how we admit borrowing without sure evidence either of identity of the fables or of contact between the nations using them. [See Appendix: Fable of the Belly and the Members.—Ed.]—Bucknill (Medical Knowledge, etc., p. 203): Rabelais uses this same fable of Æsop to illustrate the social miseries which would result if the world should be filled with a rascally rabble of people that would not lend; his hero, in the witty classification of men into those who borrow and those who lend, decidedly belonging to the former category, and being as decidedly inimical to all who did not belong to the latter.—Wordsworth (Sh's Knowledge and Use of Bible, p. 340): The well-known apologue of Menenius Agrippa is not to be traced to St Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. xii, but rather to the common source in Roman history, from which they both, we may suppose, adopted it; except that St Paul probably read it in Livy, and Shakespeare in North's translation of Plutarch.

That onely For this transposition of the adverb of limitation see, if needful, Abbott, § 420.

Gulfe W. A. Wright: That is, a whirlpool. Compare Henry V: II, iv, 10, ‘For England his approaches make as fierce As waters to the sucking of a gulf.’ And Hamlet, III, iii, 16, ‘The cease of majesty Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw What's near it with it.’—Case (Arden Sh.) also quotes in illustration, ‘resemblynge a bottomles goolphe, receyvinge all that is put into it, withoute castynge anyethinge upp againe,’ Fenton's Bandello, Discourse VII. (Tudor Translations, II, 24), and, ‘Because the gulf his (the Cyclop's) belly reacht his throat,’ Chapman, Homer's Odysseys, Bk IX, l. 412.

vnactiue Abbott (§ 442) gives a short list of adjectives used by Shakespeare with the negative suffix un- where in many cases in- is now used and vice versâ, upon which point he thus comments: ‘We appear to have no definite rule

of distinction even now, since we use ungrateful, ingratitude; unequal, inequality. Un- seems to have been preferred by Shakespeare before p and r, which do not allow in- to precede except in the form im. In- also seems to have been in many cases retained from the Latin, as in the case of “ingratus,” “infortunium,” &c. As a general rule, we now use in- where we desire to make the negative a part of the word, and un- where the separation is maintained—“untrue,” “infirm.”’— Case (Arden Sh.): The only instance of this word (there is none of its modern equivalent inactive) in Shakespeare. Compare Milton, Paradise Regained, ‘his life, Private, unactive, calm, contemplative,’ II, 80, 81.

cubbording Case (Arden Sh.): That is, stowing away as in a cupboard. The N. E. D. gives an earlier instance of this verb: Darius, 1565 (1860), 53, ‘He . . . With the woman also coberdith his lyfe.’

where For other examples wherein ‘where’ is used for whereas, see Abbott, § 134.

Instruments Murray (N. E. D., s. v. Instrument, 4): A part of the body having a special function; an organ.—Malone compares, ‘As you feel, doing thus, and see withal The instruments that feel,’ Wint. Tale, II, i, 154.—[Compare also, ‘the Genius and the mortal instruments,’ Jul. Cæs., II, i, 66, and ‘My speculative and officed instruments,’ Othello, I, iii, 271.—Ed.]

participate Malone: Here this word means participant or participating.—Knight: The modern mode of pointing the line, which is not that of the original, appears to us to destroy the freedom and euphony of the whole passage. [See Text. Notes, where it will be noticed that Knight himself does not retain the original in his text.—Verplanck follows Malone's pointing, but says in a note that he agrees with Knight that such is destructive to the freedom of the passage, possibly on the principle, Video meliora proboque, etc.—Ed.]—W. A. Wright: We should expect participant, in the sense of sharing, taking part together. Perhaps there was a confusion caused by partly connecting the word with the preceding auxiliary ‘did.’ There are many instances of apparent participles in -ed which are really adjectives formed from nouns and are used in an active sense, but I do not at present remember any in -ate. [At the end of his notes on the present play Wright says: ‘Since this note [on I, i, 106] was printed I have met with the following instance of a similarly formed participle in Twelfth Night, I, v, 291: “Hallow your name to the reverberate hills.”’

Of the whole Bayfield (p. 184): A striking example of the copyists' or

printers‘ practice of merely counting the syllables. But for the desire to keep ten, we should have had ‘o'th' whole’ here, as we have at I, iii, 33: ‘See him plucke Auffidius downe by th' haire,’ and in III, iii, 69: ‘Like graves i' th' holy churchyard.’ Read and scan: ‘Of the | whole | body, the | belly | answer | ed.—[See note by Bayfield, l. 50 ante.]

tell you with . . . Smile Theobald: Thus all the Editors, most stupidly, hitherto; as if Menenius were to smile in telling his Story, tho' the Lines, which immediately follow, make it evident that the Belly was meant to smile.

Which . . . from the Lungs Johnson: With a smile not indicating pleasure, but contempt.—W. A. Wright: The laughter of merriment came from the lungs. Compare Jacques in As You Like It, ‘My lungs began to crow like chanticleer.’—II, vii, 30. And The Tempest, ‘These gentlemen, who are of such sensible and nimble lungs that they always laugh at nothing.’—II, i, 74.

ne're Bayfield (p. 185): [Read never], ‘ne're’ causes a false stress, yet editors print it here and in countless other places where the same thing happens.

euen thus Delius (Jahrbuch, xi, p. 51, 1876): Menenius should accompany the words ‘even thus’ with pantomimic action, wherein he imitates the smile of the Belly, for the better entertainment of his auditors.—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): ‘Even thus’ suggests the action and gesture of the actor playing Menenius—a good-natured, yet large, not to say rotund, disgust at their foolishness. One imagines both hands out, the shoulders up, and the under lip thrust forth.

I may . . . belly Smile Malone: ‘And so the belly, all this notwithstanding, laughed at their folly and sayed,’ &c. North's Plutarch, p. 240, edit. 1579.— E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): Menenius began his fable with a political motive. He has now become interested in his own artistic treatment of it. The belly ‘laughed at their folly’ in North, so that Menenius’ jest is really a bit of literary criticism on Shakespeare's part.

taintingly Schmidt (Coriolanus): All modern editors substitute tauntingly here; many consider the Folio reading not even worth noting. And yet it is undoubtedly correct. To taint in the moral sense means ‘to express scorn, to bring into discredit, to insult’ (without the comic effect); we may compare the passage in Othello: ‘find some occasion to anger Cassio, either by speaking too loud, or tainting his discipline.’—[II, i, 275]. Menenius means to say that the Belly for answer smiled, and this smile alone, which Menenius illustrates graphically to the Citizens, was morally annihilating; further words in refutation were scarcely necessary. Only thus does this story by Menenius with its pauses and

interruptions by the impatient citizen acquire actual dramatic vitality.—Herford (Eversley Sh., p. 15) accepts the F1 reading, and remarks that ‘The Belly's reply is not taunting (l. 138), and “taintingly” may well mean attaintingly, i. e., indicting (them in turn).’—Verity (Student's Sh.), in answer to the foregoing note by Herford, says: ‘But lines 110, 111 surely imply that the Belly answered in a “taunting,” satirical tone; and one would like some other example of the use of “taintingly,” or even of attaintingly.’—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): That is, putting what they have said in bad odor, impugning its credit; so Iago tells Rodorigo to ‘finde some occasion to anger Cassio . . . speaking too loud, or tainting his discipline.’ The misprint in F2F3 ‘tantingly’ seems to have suggested the ‘tauntingly’ of F4.

his receite Case (Arden Sh.): That is, his prerogative, or else, what he received, which agrees with a frequent sense. Compare Rich. II: ‘Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais,’ I, i, 126.

118. 2. Cit. Your, etc.] Verity (Student's Sh.): Note how the interruptions vivify the story. The same device is used in The Tempest, I, ii, where Miranda breaks in on Prospero's long narrative. Compare, too, Menenius's own pauses (like Prospero's reproofs of Miranda, The Tempest, I, ii, 78, 87, 106) to bespeak their close attention as he reaches the crucial point of his story. This is the dramatic, as distinct from the narrative, style. [See also Note by Schmidt, l. 113 ante.—Ed.]—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): The Citizen is excited to eloquence, and therefore, from this point, speaks in blank verse instead of prose.

The Kingly . . . answer Singer (ed. i.) thus distributes these speeches: ‘Men. The kingly-crowned . . . if that they—
1 Cit. What then?
Men. 'Fore me . . . sink o' the body,—
1 Cit. Well, what then? . . . answer?’

With an evident reference to this rearrangement Singer, in his Text of Sh. Vindicated (p. 208), finds fault with Collier and his predecessors for assigning ll. 119, 120 to the Citizen instead of to Menenius; yet in his ed. ii, published three years later, he returns to the arrangement as in F1 without any comment.—Dyce (ed. i, p. 760), referring to Singer's remark that ll. 119, 120 evidently belong to Menenius, says: ‘I think, on the contrary, that it evidently belongs to the Citizen, who assumes the part and language of the rebellious members. If it be taken from the Citizen,

what propriety is there in the subsequent exclamation of Menenius, “'Fore me, this fellow speaks!”?’ Dyce likewise refers to Singer's rearrangement of speeches, remarking in conclusion, ‘among other changes in the distribution of the present dialogue the words “Should by the cormorant belly be restrain'd Who is the sink o' the body” are transferred to Menenius—with great unfitness.’

Kingly crown'd W. A. Wright: That is, having a kingly crown. This is an example of the words, participial in form, which are derived from nouns. Of the ten sephiroth or intelligences, which appear in the philosophy of the Kabbalah, the first, which is called the ‘crown,’ is placed in the head.

Counsailor Heart Johnson: The heart was anciently esteemed the seat of prudence. Homo cordatus is a prudent man.—Malone: The heart was considered by Shakespeare as the seat of the understanding. [See note by Malone on l. 144 supra.—Wright notes that in the Kabbalah the Heart is called the seat of the understanding.—Ed.]

Muniments W. A. Wright: That is, supports, defences; like the Latin munimenta.—Case (Arden Sh.): The N. E. D. quotes this passage under the sense, ‘Things with which a person or place is provided, furnishings,’ and also cites among other references Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV, viii, 6, ‘By chance he certain muniments forthdrew, Which yet with him as relickes did abide.’

that For other examples of ‘that’ as a conjunctional affix see Abbott, § 287.

Foreme W. A. Wright: A petty oath, probably substituted for the more common ‘'Fore God,’ to avoid the penalties imposed by the Act of Parliament, 3 James I, ch. 21, to restrain the abuse of players. See Mer. of Ven., I, ii, 99. It occurs again in All's Well, II, iii, 31: ‘Why, your dolphin is not lustier: 'fore me, I speak in respect.’ In 2 Henry IV: III, ii, 186, where the quartos read ‘'Fore God,’ the Folio's have ‘Trust me’; and in two other passages of the same play where the objectionable expression occurs it is omitted in the Folios. Compare also Rom. & Jul., III, iv, 34: ‘Afore me! it is so very late.’ And Othello, IV, i, 149, ‘Before me! look where she comes.’

Cormorant In a note on Love's Labour's Lost, I, i, 9, this edition, wherein ‘cormorant’ is used as here—as an adjective—the Editor says: ‘I can find no proof that this aquatic bird is more eager than others of its kind in satisfying hunger, and why the unfortunate fowl should have been selected from time immemorial as an emblem of voracity I have not yet discovered. Possibly it is one of Pliny's facts.’—Murray (N. E. D.), in this regard, gives no help; he styles

it “voracious,” but this hardly differentiates it from hungry beasts, birds, or men.’—Ed.

former Agents Walker (Crit., iii, 206) marks these words with a query, on which his editor, Lettsom, has the following foot-note: ‘From the doubt expressed here Walker was, perhaps, hesitating about the meaning of “former.” We might, perhaps, compare “former ensigns” in Jul. Cæs., V, i, 80; but there I should say Shakespeare wrote foremost ensigns, after North's Plutarch.’—[Is not ‘former’ here used in the sense aforesaid? Schmidt (Lex., s. v. 3) gives several examples of this use of ‘former’; among them he includes the present line.—Ed.]

a small Deighton (p. 123): Though Shakespeare often uses ‘small’ where we should use little, it is probable that but for the parentheses he would not have written ‘a small Patience.’ [Shakespeare's phrase is not, I think, as Deighton takes it; the relative clause in the parentheses makes the sentence really read ‘a small of patience.’ Craigie (N. E. D., s. v. small, B. 5) says: ‘A small quantity or amount; a little piece, a morsel,’ and gives the following example: ‘That we might have a small of bred, our carcase to contente.’—Drant: Horace, Sat., Wail Jeremiah V, Ljb (1566). Among other examples of ‘small’ used substantively Schmidt (Lex.) does not include the present line.—Ed.]

132. (of . . . little）] P. Simpson (Sh. Punctuation, p. 93): Compound nouns or adjectives are enclosed within brackets, where we should employ the hyphen if we used any punctuation at all. ‘In ranke, and (not to be endur'd) riots Sir,’ Lear I, iv, 226. [Compare II, i, 100: ‘How now (my faire as Noble) Ladyes.’]

you'st W. A. Wright: Apparently a provincialism which Shakespeare intentionally puts into the mouth of Menenius when addressing the citizens, and may, therefore, be retained as well as ‘woo't’ in Hamlet, V, i, 298, 299, and Lady Capulet's ‘thou's’ for thou shalt in Rom. & Jul., I, iii, 9, where the quartos and folios all have ‘thou'se.’ Compare Webster and Marston's Malcontent, IV, i, ‘Thou'st kill him.’ And again, V, iii, ‘You'st ne'er meet more’; ‘Nay, if you'll do's no good, You'st do's no harm.’—Rolfe (p. 198) takes exception to Wright's retention of the provincialism on the ground that ‘in the preceding line the Folio has “you'll,” and “you'st” here may be a mere slip of the compositor—an absent-minded substitution of his provincial form for the more correct one in the “copy.”’—[Wright's last quotation, wherein ‘you'll’ and ‘you'st’ both are used to mark a difference in the

sense, shows, I think, that Rolfe's explanation of the lack of consistency in the Folio does not fit the present case.—Ed.]

deliberate Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): Menenius is taking the part of the ‘Belly,’ that is, of the Senate, and so resents being hurried, assuming its manner of deliberating to rebuke hot-heads who accuse it rashly.

Store-house, and the Shop R. G. White: According to modern British usage Shakespeare is here somewhat pleonastic, but according to the best English usage, which is still preserved in New England and her off-shoots, he is not at all so. ‘Shop’ means properly a place where fabrics are made or work is done; and such is the sense in which it is always used with us, but in Great Britain it is rarely so applied, and is almost universally misused to mean a store or collection of articles kept or stored for sale—a confusion avoided in Elizabethan usage and of that in the present day in this country. Thus, for instance, we say a watchmaker's shop, a milliner's shop, . . . but a book store, a grocery store, . . . a shoemaker's shop, but a shoe store. . . . The transatlantic use of the word and its active verbal sense are clearly traceable to the custom of having the booth or the sales-room in front of the shop, such a vivid picture of which is presented in the opening chapter of The Fortunes of Nigel.—In the passage before us the stomach is represented as both the store house of the body—‘still cupboarding the viand’— and its shop—‘sending it through the rivers of the blood.’

I send it . . . of your blood A. H. G. Doran (Article, Medicine, ch. xiv, Sh's England, i, 421): Shakespeare's plays show that he had heard much about the teaching of practical anatomy and understood certain theories about the movement of the blood. He described the belly as sending ‘the general food . . . through the rivers of your blood.’ Such language, however, is perhaps merely figurative, and the poet died before Harvey's views were made public, and doubtless held the old notion that the blood flowed in the veins, and that the arteries held, besides blood, the vital spirits.

to th'seate o'th'Braine Tyrwhitt: This seems to me a very languid

expression. I believe we should read, with the omission of a particle, ‘to the seat, the brain.’ He uses ‘seat’ for throne, the royal seat, which the first editors not apprehending, corrupted the passage. It is thus used in Rich. II: ‘Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills Against thy seat,’ III, ii, 118. It should be observed, too, that one of the Citizens had just before characterized these principal parts of the human fabric by similar metaphors: ‘The kingly crowned head.’ . . . ‘The counsellor heart.’—[Rann is Trywhitt's only follower in thus reading.—Ed.]—Malone: I have too great respect for even the conjectures of my respectable and very judicious friend to suppress his note, though it appears to me erroneous. In the present instance I have not the smallest doubt, being clearly of opinion that the text is right. ‘Brain’ is here used for reason or understanding. Shakespeare seems to have had Camden as well as Plutarch before him; the former of whom has told a similar story in his Remaines, 1605, and has, like our poet, made the heart the seat of the brain, or understanding: ‘Hereupon they all agreed to pine away their lasie and publike enemy. One day passed over, the second followed very tedious, but the third day was so grievous to them that they called a common counsel. The eyes waxed dimme, the feete could not support the body, the armes waxed lazie, the tongue faltered and could not lay open the matter. Therefore they all with one accord desired the advice of the heart. There Reason laid open before them,’ &c., p. 109. [See Appendix: Date of Composition, Malone.] I agree, however, entirely with Tyrwhitt, in thinking that ‘seat’ means here the royal seat, the throne. ‘The seat of the brain’ is put in opposition with the heart, and is descriptive of it: ‘I send it (says the belly) through the blood, even to the royal residence, the heart, in which the kingly crowned understanding is enthroned.’—Douce (ii, 77): What Camden has given is from John of Salisbury, who wrote in the reign of Henry II, and professes to have received it from Pope Hadrian IV. See his Polycraticon, sive de nugis curialium, hb. vi, ch. 24. Camden has omitted the latter part; and the learned reader will do well to consult the original, where he will find some verses by Q. Serenus Sammonicus, a physician in the reign of Caracalla, that allude to the fable. John of Salisbury has himself composed two hundred Latin lines De membris conspirantibus, which are in the first edition of his Polycraticon printed at Brussels, without date, about 1470. These were reprinted by Andreas Rivinus at Leipsic, 1655, 8vo; and likewise at the end of the fourth volume of Fabricius's Bibliotheca mediæ et infimæ ætatis, Hamburg, 1735. They are, most probably, the lines which are called in Sinner's catalogue of the MSS at Berne, ‘Carmen Ovidii de altercatione ventris et artuum, vol. iii, p. 116. [See also note by Douce, l. 99 ante.]—Hudson (ed. i.) maintains that the interpretation given to this line by Malone in the last paragraph of his note is ‘evidently wrong; the right sense being, apparently, “I send the general food through the rivers of your blood to the heart, which is the court; I send it to the seat of the brain,” that is, the head; for the belly may as justly claim the honour of sending nourishment to the head as to the heart.’—Case (Arden Sh.): The confusion between two different bodily organs, and awkwardness of understanding one literally and the other figuratively, disposes one to reject Malone's view, but it certainly receives some support from the use of the two words court and seat, both equivalent to ‘royal residence.’

seate o'th'Braine . . . the Crankes Collier (Notes and Emendations,

etc., p. 347): It is evident that this line is not measure; and we are instructed [by the MS. Corrector] to read it and the next in a way that not only cures this defect, but much improves the sense, by following up the figure of ‘the court, the heart,’ and completing the resemblance of the human body to the various parts of a commonwealth: ‘Even to the Court, the heart, the Senate, brain; And through the ranks and offices of man.’ When ‘seat’ was written seate the mistake for senate was easy; and the change (which never occurred to any commentator) is supported both by what precedes and by what follows it, going through the various degrees in a state—the court, the senate, persons of different ranks, the holders of offices, &c.—Anon. (Blackwood's Maga., Sep., 1853, p. 320): The senate brain! when Shakespeare has distinctly told us that the senate is the belly [l. 157]. This, indeed, is the very point of the fable. Surely nothing except the most extreme degree of dotage can account for such a manifest perversion as that; yet Mr Collier says that ‘it much improves the sense.’—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, p. 208), referring to the MS. Corrector's two new readings, says: ‘Perhaps there was never a more perverse and impertinent attempt made to alter the true language of the poet. The authority Shakespeare followed for the fable was Plutarch. [In] Camden's Remaines, where it is also related, the heart is made the seat of the brain, or understanding; and there is no doubt that seat means the royal seat, the throne. . . . The alteration of “cranks” to ranks is equally unwarranted. What could the ranks signify here? “Cranks and offices” were certainly the words of the poet; “cranks” are sinuosities . . . and “offices” the functionary parts, as Shakespeare himself will show. Thus in Cymb., V, v, “All offices of nature should again Do their due functions.” The Corrector's instructions to read it otherwise will therefore be in vain and of no effect.’—T. Mommsen (Der Perkins Sh., p. 91): The alteration ranks and offices, if senate be right, only furnishes a description of the great machine of state, since ‘through the veins’ has preceded it, thus it is more pertinent here to understand ‘cranks.’

Crankes Steevens: ‘Cranks’ are the meandrous ducts of the human body.—Malone: ‘Cranks’ are windings. In Venus & Adonis our Author has employed the same word as a verb: ‘He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles,’ [l. 682]. He has a similar metaphor in Hamlet: ‘The natural gates and alleys of the body,’ I, v, 67.—Rolfe (p. 198) notes that this is the only instance of the noun in Shakespeare. [Murray (N. E. D., s. v.) gives as an example of this use of the word: ‘How he might easily win out of the turnings and cranks of the Labyrinth.’—North's Plutarch (1676), 7.]

that For other examples of ‘that’ as a conjunctional affix, see Abbott, § 287.

You my good Friends John Hunter (ed. p. 9): The Citizens. These

words are generally regarded as part of the belly's address to the members, but it is likely that Shakespeare here imitated the language of Holinshed, ‘Even so, (quoth he,) O you my masters, and citizens of Rome.’—W. A. Wright evidently arrives at the same conclusion as Hunter in regard to the distribution of this line, as he likewise considers the whole line ‘a parenthetical interruption by Menenius to call the attention of the Citizens to the real point of the fable.’

Flowre Rolfe (p. 199): Capell, followed by some modern editors, has ‘flower’; but flour is the natural antithesis to ‘bran.’ It is curious, by the way, that this is the only instance of the word in Shakespeare. In III, i, 389 below he has the same figure in ‘meale and Bran’; as also in Cymb., IV, ii, 27: ‘Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.’

Bran Skeat (Dict., s. v.) remarks that the original meaning of this word, from Old French bren, is refuse, and especially ill-smelling refuse.

What say you too't Beeching (Falcon Sh.): Menenius gives his apologue an unexpected turn, not asserting that the belly gave up all it should, but only that whatever the limbs did receive came from the belly, which, while putting the parable beside the mark, makes it for the moment unanswerable. However, he has got the mob into better humour, and so, before the First Citizen has time to discover the non sequitur, takes up the safer weapon of ridicule [l. 164].

158, 159. For examine . . . their Cares; disgest, etc.] A. E. Brae (Notes & Queries, 10 July, 1852, p. 27), If this reading were correct it would doubtless afford an example of the use of ‘digest’ in the abstract sense; but it is, in reality, a gross misprision of the true meaning of the passage, and is only another proof of how far we are still from possessing a correctly printed edition of Shakespeare. The proper punctuation would be this: ‘The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members!—For examine—
Their counsels, and their cares digest things rightly
Touching the weal o'the common!—you shall find,’ &c.

‘For examine’ is introduced merely to diversify the discourse and to fix the attention of the listeners; it might be wholly omitted without injury to the sense, but in the passage, as it now stands, ‘examine’ is made an effective verb, having for its objects the counsels and the cares of the senators, while ‘digest’ is made auxiliary to and synonymous with ‘examine,’ and, like it, is in the imperative mood, as though addressed to the people, instead of being, as it ought to be, in the indicative, with ‘counsels’ and ‘cares’ for its agents. It is a curious instance of how completely the true sense of a passage may be distorted by the misapplication of a few commas. ‘Digest,’ therefore, in this passage, as elsewhere, is in direct allusion to the animal function. The very essence and pith of the parable of ‘the belly and the members’ is to place in opposition the digestive function of the belly with the more active offices of the members; and the application of the parable is that ‘the senators are this good belly,’ their counsels and their cares digest for the general good, and distribute the resulting benefits throughout the whole community. This is the true reading; and no person who duly considers it, or who has compared it with the original in Plutarch, but must be satisfied that it is so. [See also note by A. E. Brae on III, i, 158.]

No publique . . . your selues Verity (Student's Sh.): The Citizens might have retorted that they earned these ‘public benefits’ (if any) by public services, such as fighting for the State; also that, as a matter of fact, they were starving, while the ‘members’ of the body, on Menenius's own showing, received from the belly their ‘natural competency’ in return for their services.—[Verity's point is, I think, well taken; but then Menenius knew well the intelligence of his audience, and that they would not be likely to detect the flaws in his argument either here or at l. 155, as shown by Beeching. Had it not been so, the Citizen might easily have turned the whole of Menenius's fable against him by showing that, in the present situation, although actually in rebellion, the Citizens were more like to the Belly, in the fable, and the Senate to the limbs, than as represented by Menenius. By starving and depriving them of their rights the Senate's power would be weakened.—Ed.]

What do you thinke? E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): Menenius has learnt one of the arts of the public speaker, to single out the most prominent of his interrupters and disconcert him by making him ridiculous. But, on the whole, his speech has not been a success. In North his persuasions ‘pacified the people’; in Shakespeare they have no effect. The whole episode only serves to bring out the complete divergence between the noble and the plebeian points of view. And one feels that the Citizen, who has shown a good deal of shrewd common sense, and has escaped all the pitfalls of Menenius' dialectic, has really had the best of it. Menenius' argument, when analysed, is only the ordinary sophistry by which the middlemen and the unproductive classes generally justify to themselves their own appropriation of nine-tenths of the profits of industry.

It is very plausible, but not calculated to convince a starving proletariate.— [The observation by Chambers that the persuasions of Menenius have no effect is one that must be apparent to any reader or auditor, and if to us, how much more so must it have been to Shakespeare with his abundant knowledge of dramatic construction. That he realised how difficult was the task before him is shown at the beginning of the colloquy where the Citizen says that Menenius must not think ‘to fob off their disgraces with a tale.’ Menenius does attempt it, but does not succeed in making the mob put down their weapons and quietly disperse, a course of action, on so slight a cause, which Shakespeare rightly realised would be perfectly inconsistent with a crowd in such an ugly mood, bent on destruction. All that Menenius accomplishes is to delay their precipitate action. It can hardly be said, therefore, that this fable is here without any dramatic effect.—Ed.]

the great Toe Schmidt (ed. p. 35): Menenius so calls him, following out the fable of the Belly and the Members.

Thou . . . to run Malone (Supplemental Observations, i, 218) in reference to the pointing of this line as in the Variorum of '78 (see Text. Notes) suggests that a comma be placed after ‘run’ instead of after ‘blood.’ 'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true that Malone has, in this case, neglected to glance at the Folio text wherein is the punctuation that he proposes as a change.—Ed.—Staunton: Menenius is supposed to mean: ‘thou, meagre wretch, least in heart and resolution, art prompt enough to lead when profit points the way.’ Yet if nothing better can be extracted from these words in their metaphorical sense, we would rather understand them literally, and believe ‘worst’ to be a misprint, as it might easily be, for last. The passage then becomes perfectly intelligible and in character with the speaker: ‘Thou rascal, that art last in blood (that is, into blood shed) to run, Lead'st first to win some vantage.’

Rascall Malone: ‘Rascal’ meant a lean deer, and is here used equivocally. [In The Master of Game, the earliest-known book on Venery, ch. iii, the author says of the Hart: ‘And the first year that they be calved they be called a Calf, the second year a bullock; and that year they go forth to rut; the third year a brocket; the fourth year a staggard, the fifth year a stag; the sixth year a hart of ten and then first is he chaseable, for always before shall he be called but rascal or folly’ (ed. Baillie-Grohman, p. 29). On the derivation of this word Skeat (Dict., s. v.) says: ‘As the word was a term of the chase, and as it has the French suffix, aille, it must be of French origin, no other origin being conceivable, the word not

being English. Nor can it, I think, be doubted that the English raskaille stands for an Old French rascaille, which is clearly the same word as modern French racaille, “the rascality or base and rascall sort, the scumme, dregs, offals, outcasts of any company,” Cotgrave.' This last bears out Malone's remark as to the equivocal use of the word in the present passage.—Madden (p. 60, foot-note) says: ‘In the sense in which [rascal] is now used as a term of reproach, it was in the first instance spoken by the “figure Metaphore . . . as one should in reproch say to a poore man, thou raskall knaue where raskall is properly the hunters terme giuen to young deere, leane and out of season, and not to people.’—Puttenham: Arte of English Poesie, 1589 (ed. Arber, p. 191).—Hon. J. W. Fortescue (Shakespeare's England, vol. ii, ch. xxvii, § 1, Hunting, p. 339, foot-note): Shakespeare's use of the word [rascal] is peculiar: ‘Horns? Even so. Poor men alone? No, no; the noblest deer hath them as huge as the rascal.’—As You Like It, III, iii, 58. [The present line here quoted.] Reading these quotations together with the speech of John Talbot [1 Henry VI: IV, ii, 48] it is plain that Shakespeare conceived of ‘rascal’ as a deer with a great head and a small body, who would neither fight nor run. Such deer though not unknown are very uncommon, though it is by no means unusual for a deer past his prime to carry an inferior head on a very large body. Shakespeare's rascal would be at a great disadvantage, for deer fight by shoving before they come to goring; and here the light weight of his body would place him at the mercy of a stag of heavier frame. Moreover, the enormous mass of bone upon his head, . . . with no sufficient strength of body to carry it, would make such a deer weak and helpless. Hence the legitimate conclusion that he could neither run far nor fight well, for he would be overweighted and overbalanced by his head. He might very likely be in the foremost place in a herd, for, when a herd is moved the hinds and young male deer always move in front, and the big stags bring up the rear; but he could never bully anything bigger than a four year old. . . . It may be questioned if Shakespeare was correct in using the word ‘rascal’ only in this restricted sense; and if the term be extended to its legitimate limits, so as to cover all young male deer, then Shakespeare's similes are false; for a young stag (as the sportsmen of the day well knew) can and will run better than any other and can fight savagely enough if he husbands some strength for the bay; which, however, as a rule he does not. [It is to be feared that Fortescue has taken the words of Touchstone too literally as an indication of Shakespeare's knowledge of venery. The context, of which this line is but a small part, shows that there is here intended but another allusion to a jest which was never stale to Shakespeare and his fellows, unsavory as it may be to us. ‘Rascal,’ as Touchstone uses it here, is simply following out the idea expressed in ‘poor men’ in contrast to the ‘noblest.’ That is, Both noble and poor are alike subject to the same misfortune.—Ed.]

that art worst Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 82) follows Hanmer in reading ‘that art first,’ and thereon says: ‘The maker of this alteration, the Oxford editor, has lessen'd the applause that was due to it by going farther than necessary, and changing “in blood” to from blows; for the former is very intelligible, signifying in any bloody business, any business of danger.’

that art . . . blood to run Johnson: I think we may better read, by an easy change, ‘thou art worst in blood, to ruin Lead'st first, to win,’ &c. Thou

that art the meanest by birth, art the foremost to lead thy fellows to ruin, in hope of some advantage. The meaning, however, is perhaps only this: ‘Thou that art a hound of the lowest breed, lead'st the pack, when anything is to be gotten.’ —Steevens: ‘Worst in blood’ may be the true reading. In 1 Henry VI: ‘If we be English deer, be then in blood; Not rascal-like to fall down with a pinch,’ IV, ii, 48.—Malone: The phrase ‘in blood’ was a phrase of the forest. Our author seldom was careful that his comparisons should answer on both sides. He seems to mean here ‘thou worthless scoundrel, though like a deer not in blood, thou art in the worst condition for running of all the herd of plebeians, takest the lead in this tumult, in order to obtain some private advantage to yourself.’ What advantage the foremost of a herd of deer could obtain is not easy to point out, nor did Shakespeare, I believe, consider. Perhaps, indeed, he only uses ‘rascal’ in its ordinary sense. So afterwards, ‘From rascals worse than they,’ [I, vi, 56]. Dr Johnson's interpretation appears to me inadmissible; as the term, though it is applicable both in its original and metaphorical sense to a man, cannot, I think, be applied to a dog; nor have I found any instance of the term ‘in blood’ being applied to the canine species. [Malone refers to a note of his on ‘The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood,’ Love's Labour's Lost, IV, ii, 3, but as he there merely discusses a question as to a textual change in regard to the word ‘sanguis,’ his remarks are of no assistance in the present passage. As to Malone's remark that ‘in blood’ is a ‘phrase of the forest’ I can but say that so it may be, but a careful search of the Duke of York's volume, The Master of Game, circa 1400; of Turberville's Noble Arte of Venerie, 1576, and of N. Coxe's Gentleman's Recreation, 1674, has not yielded any example of such a phrase either in the lists of terms used in the chase or in the various descriptions of the Hart, the Buck, the Roebuck, or the Deer; with these writers the usual term applied to a Hart in his prime condition is either ‘pride’ or ‘prime of grease.’ The N. E. D., s. v. Blood, under the caption Hunting phrase, quotes the passages from 1 Henry VI. and Love's Labour's Lost, given above, and but one other as follows: ‘When hounds are out of blood, there is a kind of evil genius attending all that they do, while a pack of fox hounds well in blood, like troops flushed with conquest, are not easily withstood.’—P. Beckford (1781), Hunting, p. 308. It would, I think, be unfair to Malone to say that he did not know of this when he remarked that he had not ‘found any instance of the term applied to the canine species’; all that he means apparently is that in writings contemporary with Shakespeare the phrase, as far as he knows, does not appear; the comparatively modern date of the quotation from Beckford seems to justify such a conclusion. I speak with great diffidence, but possibly the phrase ‘in blood’ thus applied to a deer in its prime is original with Shakespeare since no other writer has used it in exactly this sense.—Ed.]—Verity (Student's Sh.): Malone says, ‘What advantage the foremost of a herd of deer could obtain is not easy to point out.’ But the latter part of l. 169 really applies to the Citizen: he—‘to win some advantage’—thrusts himself into the first place, though no more worthy of it than a ‘rascal’ stag which somehow gets into the place of honour at the head of the herd and ought therefore to be fittest to hunt. —W. A. Wright: Menenius argues that the citizen, who was most unfitted to be a leader, must have thrust himself into a prominent position for some purposes of his own.—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh): Menenius means that for rascals to lead may be for their own advantage, but not for that of the herd.

Rome, and her Rats, P. Simpson (Sh. Punctuation, p. 30) shows by other examples that the comma is frequently used to mark emphasis, and in such case it follows the stressed word. ‘Timon will to the Woods, where he shall finde Th' vnkindest Beast, more kinder than Mankinde.’—Timon, IV, i, 35. ‘Thou canst compell, no more then she entreate.’—Mid. N. Dream, III, ii, 249.

baile Theobald: It must be the vanquisht side, sure, that could want it; and who were likely to be their Bail? But it is endless to question with negligence and stupidity. The Poet undoubtedly wrote as I have restor'd: Bale, i. e., Sorrow, Misfortune, must have the worst of it. I have restor'd this word in some other passages of our Author; and we meet with it in a play attributed to him, call'd Locrine, ‘Yea, with these eyes thou hast seen her, and therefore pull them out, for they will work thy Bale,’ [ed. Brooke, I, ii, 21. Theobald furnishes several other examples from other sources of bale used in this sense; but according to W. A. Wright this is the only passage wherein Shakespeare uses the noun. Theobald's statement that he had corrected the spelling in some other passages is, therefore, a slight exaggeration. Wright gives its derivation as from A. S. bealu, injury, mischief, and quotes, as a use by Shakespeare of an adjectival form of the word, ‘With baleful weeds, and precious juiced flowers,’ Rom. & Jul., II, iii, 8, a passage which Mason had earlier quoted to illustrate the fact that Shakespeare uses both bale and bane to signify poison. Malone remarks that ‘This word was antiquated in Shakespeare's time, being marked as obsolete by Bullokar in his English Expositor, 1616.’—Ed.]

Enter Caius Martius ‘I can never forget Kemble's Coriolanus; his entrée was the most brilliant I ever witnessed. His person derived a majesty from a scarlet robe which he managed with inimitable dignity. The Roman energy of his deportment, the seraphic grace of his gesture, and the movements of his perfect self-possession displayed the great mind, daring to command, and disdaining to solicit, admiration. His form derived an additional elevation of perhaps two inches from his sandals. In every part of the house the audience rose, waved their hats, and huzzaed, and the cheering must have lasted more than five minutes.’—John Howard Payne, Letter from London, June 19, 1817: G. Harrison's Payne, ch. iii, pp. 68-69 (quoted by B. Matthews, Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and United States, vol. ii, p. 86).

175. For a parallel between the expression of ideas in this and following lines and a passage in the play of Sir Thomas More see Appendix: Shakespeare and the Masses, R. W. Chambers, p. 711.

Thanks Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 82): The address of the Author is wonderful in the entry of Marcius; giving us in one single word, and that his first and a monosyllable, a thoro insight into his character, and a preparation for what is to follow.

the poore Itch . . . Opinion E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): That the rabble should have an opinion at all is to Coriolanus a sign of an unhealthy condition in the state. Unless they leave it alone they will only make themselves the more uncomfortable for it. The choice of metaphor is characteristic. The mob are always, physically as well as spiritually, offensive to Coriolanus. The grammar may either be ‘make for yourselves scabs’ or ‘make yourselves into scabs.’ ‘Scab’ was a common term of abuse; compare: ‘Con. Here, man, I am at thy elbow. Bor. Mass, and my elbow itch'd; I thought there would a scab follow.’—Much Ado, III, iii, 105.

to thee Dyce: The Folio has ‘to thee’—the transcriber or compositor, it would seem, having mistaken ‘ye’ for ‘ye’ (i. e., thee)—that the author could not possibly have written ‘thee’ here is manifest. [R. G. White agrees with Dyce that ‘thee’ is clearly a misprint, but I am not wholly persuaded that the Folio reading is not more dramatic than Dyce's proposal. The words of Marcius are an echo of those of the Citizen, and are, therefore, directed at him specifically. The Citizen had used ‘good word’ sarcastically, and Marcius turns upon him with the literal meaning; having thus disposed of his single antagonist he again addresses the mob collectively.—Ed.]

That like nor . . . you proud Warburton: That they did not like war is evident from the reason assigned, of its frighting them; but why they should not like peace (and the reason of that too is assigned) will be very hard to conceive. Peace, he says, made them proud by bringing with it an increase of wealth and power, for those are what make a people proud; but then those are what they like but too well, and so must needs like peace, the parent of them. This being contrary to what the text says, we may be assured it is corrupt, and that Shakespeare wrote: ‘That likes not peace, nor war?’—i. e., Whom neither peace nor war fits or agrees with, as making them either proud or cowardly. By this

reading ‘peace’ and ‘war,’ from being the accusatives to likes, become the nominatives. But the Editors, not understanding this construction, and seeing likes, a verb singular, to ‘Curs,’ a noun plural, which they supposed the nominative to it, would, in order to show their skill in grammar, alter it to ‘like’; but likes for pleases was common with the writers of this time.—Johnson: That to like is to please every one knows, but in that sense it is as hard to say why peace should not like the people as, in the other sense, why the people should not like peace. The truth is, that Coriolanus does not use the two sentences consequentially, but first reproaches them with unsteadiness, then with their other occasional vices. —Theobald, writing to Warburton, 12th February, 1729, says: ‘You would make nominatives of peace and war. I had always reconciled it to myself thus, that neither like war, nor can be content with peace. War frights you, and peace and plenty make you so insolent and exacting that you do not know what you would have yourselves, and thereby seem not to like tranquillity’ (Nichols: Illustrations, etc., ii, 479).—Mason (Comments, etc., p. 246): If it were not for the comments that have been made on this passage, I should have passed it over as one that required no manner of explanation. ‘That like nor peace nor war’ means, that are not contented with either peace or war; the one affrighted them, and they therefore disliked it; the other made them proud, and pride is the parent of discontent. I don't understand the force of Warburton's amendment, as I think the case is pretty much the same, whether we say ‘that they like not peace’ or ‘that peace does not please them.’—Heath (409): The excessive affectation of subtilty misled Mr Warburton into this violent construction [‘that likes not,’ etc.]. The common reading to a common understanding is plain enough and would meet with no difficulty. The meaning is: Neither peace nor war can satisfy you, or content you. In war you are always afraid of the consequences; and in peace your pride won't let you be quiet, or think any treatment of you, however kind and favourable, equal to your deservings. But Mr Warburton by a long train of profound reasonings, hath discovered that the mob must necessarily love peace because it brings with it an increase of wealth and power, whereas the very contrary of this was the constant experience of the Roman republic. In peace the Plebeians were always most oppressed because the Patricians had then most need of their assistance; whereas in time of war they were obliged to pay court to them for their own preservation. [It is, I think, quite beside the point here to enter into any discussion as to the relative value of the statements of either Warburton or Heath regarding the attitude of the Plebeians to the states of war and peace in the days of the Roman republic. Coriolanus says they are satisfied with neither state. That is all there is to it; we must, moreover, bear in mind that this is the petulant retort of a very testy and irritable man to a set of persons whom he despises. The Englishman's attitude of mind, in the time of Shakespeare at least, is, perhaps, reflected in the colloquy between the Servingmen in Act IV, sc. v, lines 217-230, and from that we learn that the preference was on the side of the stirring times of war, and not for the lethargic days of peace.—Ed.]

The other . . . proud Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 82): Meaning ungovernable and prone to sedition; mark enough of their not liking peace, when they were so ready to break and disturb it.

No surer Rev. John Hunter: Compare: ‘An habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.’—2 Henry IV: I, iii, 89.

coale of fire vpon the Ice Hales (Academy, July 20, 1878; reprinted in Notes and Essays, p. 292): [There may be here] a reference to the famous frost of 1607-8. It must be allowed that this is a somewhat out-of-the-way image. Coals on ice are not usually a common spectacle; but it would seem they were so in the winter of 1607-8, and at that time the image would be by no means farfetched or unfamiliar; it would, in fact, be obviously suggested. Of course one would lay no great stress on it if there was nothing else to connect the play with that time; but there being other things that so connect it, the allusion may perhaps be taken as confirmatory. ‘Above Westminster,’ writes Chamberlain to Carleton, January 8, 1607-8, ‘the Thames is quite frozen over, and the Archbishop came from Lambeth on Twelfth Day over the ice to Court. Many fantastical experiments are daily put in practice, as certain youths burnt a gallon of wine upon the ice, and made all the passengers partakers.’ An account of this frost, written during its prevalence, is given in a tract called ‘The Great Frost: Cold doings in London, a Dialogue,’ reprinted by Arber in An English Garner, vol. i, p. 79. The Citizen in this dialogue tells—to quote a side-note—of beer, ale, wine, victuals, and fires on the Thames. ‘Are you cold with going over?’ runs the text, ‘You shall ere you come to the middle of the river spy some ready with pans of coals to warm your fingers.’—W. A. Wright: That is, no more lasting, having no more endurance; disappearing as rapidly at the approach of danger as a hot coal melts its way through ice, or a hailstone melts in the sun. Compare: ‘Rogues, hence, avaunt! vanish like hailstones, go.’—Merry Wives, I, iii, 90.

Your Vertue . . . did it Steevens: That is, Your virtue is to speak well of him whom his own offences have subjected to justice; and to rail at those laws by which he whom you praise was punished.—Case (Arden Sh.): The thought is similar in Ant. & Cleo., I, ii, 192-194, ‘our slippery people, Whose love is never link'd to the deserver Till his deserts are past’; and again (Ibid., I, iv, 43), ‘the ebb'd man, ne'er loved till ne'er worth love.’

that Iustice For examples of this omission of the relative, see, if needful, Abbott, § 244.—Badham (p. 11): Read ‘That justice did,’ omitting ‘it’; i. e., that which justice did in punishing the criminal.

sickmans Walker (Crit., ii, 136): Richman, youngman, oldman, deadman, sickman. In fact, man in combinations of this kind—such of them, I

mean, as from their nature are of frequent occurrence—had an enclitic force. This is evident not only from their being so frequently printed either in the manner above, or with a hyphen, but also from the flow of the verse in many of the passages where they occur. [In a foot-note Walker's editor, Lettsom, calls attention to l. 222 below: ‘Corne for the Richmen onely.’—Ed.]

Hang ye: trust ye? Coleridge (Literary Remains, p. 100): I suspect that Shakespeare wrote it transposed: ‘Trust ye? Hang ye!’—[Walker (Crit., iii, 206), in reference to Coleridge's suggestion, merely remarks: ‘Perhaps right.’— Dyce (ed. ii.), quoting both of the foregoing, says: ‘But compare the first words of Marcius's next speech, “Hang 'em! They say!”’ This last should, however, read ‘They said,’ see l. 219.—Ed.]

these Dyce (ed. ii.) conjectures that ‘these’ should be the; had he but consulted any editor between Rowe and the Variorum of 1773 (except Capell) he would have learned that therein he was anticipated.—Ed.

What's their seeking Malone: When I was more fond of conjecture than I am at present, and, like many others, too desirous to reduce our author's phraseology to that of the present day, I proposed to read, ‘What is't they're seeking?’ but the text certainly is right. ‘Seeking’ is here used substantively. The answer is, ‘Their seeking, or suit (to use the language of the time), is for corn.’ [As this confession of youthful error appears only in Malone's own edition, 1790, the explanation of the word ‘seeking’ alone being retained in subsequent editions, it would seem that, having freed his soul by admission of the heinous offence, he wished that the whole dreadful sin should be buried in oblivion! —Ed.]

wherof For other examples of ‘of’ used with verbs of fullness, where we should now use with, see Abbott, § 171.

They'l Abbott (§ 321) cites the present line as perhaps an example wherein will is used with the third person with the meaning pretend to or desire to, as in: ‘He will be here, and yet he is not here.’—1 Henry VI: II, iii, 58. Thus the whole line is: ‘They pretend to sit by the fire and presume to know.’—Ed.

They'l sit . . . cobled Shooes Verity (Student's Sh.): Compare Lear's words to Cordelia: ‘Come, let's away to prison . . .’ ‘. . . so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out.’—V, iii, 11-15.

Who thriues . . . giue out Badham (p. 9) gives this line as an example of a true Alexandrine, in that it has an unaccented final syllable more than the regular pentameter line.—Abbott (§ 501) marks this line as an example of the trimeter couplet.

Side factions W. A. Wright: That is, take part in factions. The verb is used intransitively in IV, ii, 5. Similarly, Webster in The White Devil (p. 14, ed. Dyce, 1857) has ‘Do you bandy factions 'gainst me?’—Perring (p. 286): Why say that ‘side factions’ means ‘take part in factions’ unless that be the only tolerable, or decidedly the best, meaning that the words can bear? As a matter of fact, it is neither the only possible nor, in my opinion, the most probable one. These fire-side gossips affected to know the state of the political just as they affected to know the state of the social world; they patched up imaginary parties, making this man belong to this side, and that man to that, just as they gave out conjectural marriages; faction-makers and match-makers were they, albeit their factions and their matches had no existence save in their idle imaginations and brainless babble.—Case (Arden Sh.): That is, take the side of. But in view of the whole passage, and especially the making of imaginary matches and the arbitrary estimation of parties, there is excuse for those who prefer to take ‘side factions’ in some such sense as—invent factions and the composition of these opposite ‘sides.’

Coniecturall Marriages Wordsworth (Historical Plays, i, 116): I find no explanation of this, but the matter of intermarriage between upper and lower social classes was made a political and party question in the early days of the Roman Republic.

feebling That is, making feeble. Wright compares: ‘Shall that victorious hand be feebled here, That in your chambers gave you chastisement.’—King

John, V, ii, 146.—Abbott (§ 290) furnishes many examples of this conversion of nouns or adjectives into verbs.

Would the Nobility . . . my Lance Minto (p. 304): Let us see what can be said for and against the extravagant ramps of some of Shakespeare's heroes. There are passages in Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus almost as bombastic as anything to be found in Shakespeare's dramatic predecessors. Cæsar's bearing in the interview with the conspirators, when they beg the repeal of Cimber's banishment, is not less loſty than Tamburlaine's inflation, though more calm and dignified—‘Know Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied.’ And the speech beginning ‘I could be well moved, if I were as you,’ may not be an offence against the modesty of nature, but, taken by itself, is an offence against the modesty of art. The boasts and brags of Coriolanus out-Herod the Herod of the Mysteries. For example [the present lines here quoted], and: ‘Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained Ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr'd the moon with splinters.’—IV, v, 109-112.

[This last is, however, in the speech of Aufidius to Coriolanus.—Ed.] It is a noticeable circumstance that these inflated speeches—as well as one or two in Ant. & Cleo.—are put in the mouths of Roman heroes. I am not quite sure that this is not one explanation and justification of them: they may have been Shakespeare's ideal of what appertained to the Roman character. But apart from their being true to the Roman manner, they may be justified also on the principle of variety. It must have been a relief to Shakespeare's mind, ever hungry for fresh types of character, to expatiate in the well-marked high astounding ideal; and it is equally a relief to the student or spectator who may have followed his career and dwelt with appeciative insight on his varied representation of humanity. This is the broadest justification: if we consider more curiously, other justifications make themselves palpable. The inflation of Coriolanus and Cæsar is not like Tamburlaine's, presented to us as a thing unquestioned and admired by those around them, as being, for aught said upon the stage to the contrary, the becoming language of heroic manhood. The violent language of Coriolanus is deprecated by his friends and raises a furious antagonism in his enemies. Side by side with Cæsar's high conception of himself we have the humorous expression of his greatness by blunt Casca and the sneering of cynical Cassius. In the case of Cæsar, too, there is a profound contrast between his lofty declaration of immovable constancy and the immediate dethronement of the god to lifeless clay. We must not take the rant of Cæsar, Coriolanus, or Antony by itself simply as rant, and wish with Ben Jonson that it had been blotted out. We must consider whether it does not become the Roman character; we must remember that a varied artist like Shakespeare may be allowed an occasional rant as a stretch to powers weary of the ordinary level; and, above all, we must observe

how it is regarded by other personages in the drama—in what light it is presented to the audience.

ruth W. A. Wright: That is, pity, compassion; from A. S. hreów, grief, sorrow. The word occurs in Early English in the forms reowthe or reouthe; later reuthe or rewthe and ruthe; but, although we find in Icelandic the corresponding word hryggth, it does not appear that the form with th occurs in Anglo-Saxon. ‘Ruth’ has survived in the adjective ruthless, but is only used by itself as an archaic word. Compare Tro. & Cress., V, iii, 48: ‘Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth.’

Quarrie Johnson: Why a quarry? I suppose not because he would pile them square, but because he would give them for carrion to the birds of prey. [This complete misunderstanding of the word ‘quarry’ called forth from both Monck Mason and Steevens an array of quotations wherein this word is used for either slaughtered animals or men. Malone closed the controversy by remarking, somewhat contemptuously, ‘Bullokar, in his English Expositor, 1616, says that “a quarry among hunters signifieth the reward given to hounds after they have hunted, or the venison which is taken by hunting.”’ This sufficiently explains the word of Coriolanus.—Ed.]

quarter'd Rev. John Hunter: That is, war-shunning; home-sheltered. In North's Plutarch they are called ‘home-tarriers and house-doves.’ [Hunter was perhaps led to this roundabout interpretation by the line above, ‘They'll sit by the fire and presume to know,’ etc., but ‘quarter'd’ here, I think, bears its more usual meaning, cut in quarters, as in the sentence pronounced against traitors. There is, thus, a certain propriety in Coriolanus using the judicial term in connection with the rebellious citizens.—Ed.]

picke Malone (Supplement: Observations, 1, 218): As the only authentic copy of this play reads ‘picke my lance,’ on what principle can it be changed? [See Text. Notes.] The same word occurs in the sense here required, with only a slight variation in the spelling, in Henry VIII: ‘I'll pecke you o'er the pales else.’—[V, iv, 94. Malone in his own edition (1790) furnished another example of ‘pick’ in the sense of pitch. ‘To wrestle, play at strole-ball, or to runne. To picke the barre, or to shoot off a gun.’—An Account of Auntient Customes and Games, &c., MSS Harl. 2057, fol. 10, b.]—Tollet, in reference to the spelling pitch, says that this word is still pronounced ‘pick’ in Staffordshire, ‘where they say picke me such a thing, that is, pitch or throw anything that the demanderwants.’ —Steevens: Thus, in Froissart's Chronicle, cap. C. lxiii. fo. lxxxii. b: ‘—and as he stouped downe to take up his swerde, the Frenche squyer dyd pycke his swerde at hym, and by hap strake hym through bothe the thyes.’—[The N. E. D., s. v. Pick 2. ‘—to pitch, hurl, or throw,’ quotes this last passage as the earliest example of the use of this word. Under this head the present line is also given.—Ed.] —Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): Commonly explained as pitch or throw my lance. But perhaps the picture it suggests is better of the lance running through a thick mass of bodies, as high as it could pierce, and leave enough of it sticking up for his hand to grasp or picke.

almost Anon. (New Readings, etc., Blackwood's Maga., Sep., 1853, p. 320). [The MS. Corrector's change of] ‘almost’ to all most is decidedly an improvement, and ought, we think, to get admission into the text. [See Text. Notes.]

lacke discretion W. A. Wright: That is, discretion, which is the better part of valour, lacking which they might be supposed to have courage.

dissolu'd Murray (N. E. D., s. v. 16): Of an assembly or collective body: To break up into its individual constituents; to disperse, to lose its aggregate or corporate character, 1513. More in Grafton Chron. (1568), II, 795: ‘The company dissolved and departed.’

Hang em Bayfield (p. 186): Altogether 'em occurs 11 times [in Coriol.], sometimes at the end of the line, sometimes in the middle. If the cases were genuine, it would be quite clear that Shakespeare never knew what he might write next, for them occurs in an unstressed position at least 32 times, and often at the end of the line, as for instance: ‘May they perceive 's intent: he will require them.’—II, ii, 174. ‘You must not speak of that, you must desire them To thinke upon you.—Thinke upon me? Hang 'em.’—II, iii, 56. ‘Ere yet the fight be done, packe up: downe with them!’—I, v, 11. If Shakespeare ever wrote 'em, surely he would have done so here.

an hungry W. A. Wright: Coriolanus imitates the rustic language of the plebeians and uses what, in all probability, was a provincialism in Shakespeare's time. In the Merry Wives, I, i, 280, Master Slender excuses himself with ‘I am not a-hungry, I thank you forsooth’; and in Twelfth Night, II, iii, 136, Sir Andrew Aguecheek says, ‘'Twere as good a deed as to drink when a man's a-hungry.’

sigh'd forth Prouerbes W. A. Wright: ‘In a fastidious age, indeed,’ remarks Archbishop Trench (Proverbs and their Lessons, pp. 2, 3), ‘and one of false refinement, they may go nearly, or quite out of use among the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, or “no man of fashion,” as I think is his exact phrase, “ever uses a proverb.” And with how fine a touch of nature Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who, with all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy for the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment of these.’ [In a note on King John, I, i, 169, Wright calls attention to the use of proverbial sayings by Faulconbridge as characteristic of the rusticity of his breeding.—Ed.]

Hunger-broke stone wals In Ray's Collection of English Proverbs this proverb appears thus: ‘Hunger will break through stone walls.’ The next one is

not as easily identified; Ray has, ‘It's an ill dog that deserves not a crust,’ which is perhaps as near as we can paraphrase Coriolanus's contemptuous recollection of what was said. The other remaining phrases I have been unable to locate in the many collections of English proverbs. The hyphen connecting ‘hunger’ and ‘broke’ should, of course, be placed between ‘stone’ and ‘wals.’—Ed.

breake . . . generosity Johnson: That is, to give the final blow to the nobles. ‘Generosity’ is high birth.—Steevens: So in Meas. for Meas., ‘The generous and gravest citizens.’—IV, vi, 13. [Wright also quotes in illustration: ‘The generous islanders, By you invited, do attend your presence.’—Othello, III, iii, 280.]—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.) gives quite a different interpretation of this: ‘Make it useless for generosity to have any heart, or yield any favors, since by this measure feebleness was given strength enough to make bold power show alarm. Martius, distrusting the people thoroughly, regards concessions as extremely dangerous. These vigorous speeches, pelting with direct hard words those standing before him, are Shakespeare's freely dramatic creations. Yet he has infused the spirit of Martius's advice to the Senate about the people into this mould of his own. According to Plutarch, in the first disturbance, Martius held that “leuity . . . was a beginning of disobedience” that would “bring all to confusion”; also, in the second, that the people did not equal the nobles “in true nobility and valiantness.” When Plutarch's words directly fit his situation, the Poet finds them good enough to borrow with adaptations; when he needs something more direct and biting, as here, he himself fashions it, but not without foundation.’

hang them . . . a'th Moone Steevens: So in Ant. & Cleo., ‘Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o'the moon,’ IV, xii, 45.—W. A. Wright: So also Heywood, The Silver Age, ‘Blowne And hang'd vpon the high hornes of the moone’ (Works, iii, 153).

Shooting their Emulation Warburton: ‘Shouting their emulation’ is no very elegant expression. I rather think Shakespeare wrote ‘suiting their emulation.’ That is, the action of throwing their caps on high suited or agreed with their aspiring thoughts.—Heath (p. 410): One would think that the sense was so plain that it could not be easily mistaken, Shouting as if they strove who should shout loudest. Yet Mr Warburton, not understanding the elegance of the expression, rather thinks Shakespeare wrote, Suiting their emulation. That is,

according to him, ‘they threw their caps so high as a suitable demonstration of their aspiring thoughts’; though Coriolanus himself had said but a few lines before that their thoughts aspired no higher than barely to get bread in order to preserve themselves and their families from starvation. [Johnson in his Preface says in reference to Heath's attacks on Warburton that the assailant ‘bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him.’ In the present instance the malignant serpent might have added to the rancor of his bite had he but remarked, in conclusion, that Rowe, in his 2nd ed., had, long before, anticipated Warburton.—Ed.]—Malone interprets these words in accordance with the paraphrase given above by Heath.—Steevens: ‘Emulation’ in the present instance, I believe, signifies faction. ‘Shouting their emulation’ may mean ‘expressing the triumph of their faction by shouts.’ Thus in 1 Henry VI: ‘the trust of England's honour keep off aloof with worthless emulation,’ [IV, iv, 21]. Again in Tro. & Cress.: ‘Whilst emulation in the army crept,’ [II, ii, 212], i. e., faction.—W. A. Wright corroborates Steevens in this interpretation of ‘emulation’ and quotes, also, in illustration: ‘My heart laments that virtue cannot live Out of the teeth of emulation,’ Jul. Cæs., II, iii, 14. Wright calls attention to the fact that in I, ix, 63 ‘shout’ is spelt ‘shoot’ in the first three Folios. —Collier (Notes & Emendations, etc., p. 347): ‘Shooting their emulation’ is altered [by the MS. Corrector] to ‘shouting their exultation.’ Modern editors have adopted shouting; and ‘emulation,’ in the sense in which Shakespeare uses it, does not seem to require change; exultation, however, better expresses what is intended, and ‘shooting’ for shouting shows that the compositor was careless.—Dyce (ed. ii, p. 241): The MS. Corrector reads ‘Shouting their exultation.’ But the text is certainly right, and seems to be rightly explained by Malone.—Leo (ed., p. 119): The sense of the last word [‘emulation’] is not very clear in this place (if it does not mean ‘They shout at the success of their emulation’); perhaps we ought to read instead of ‘their emulation’ the innovation. ‘They shout at the innovation, with which they have succeeded.’ [This somewhat unfortunate emendation Leo repeats in his collected edition of Notes, published in 1885, twenty-one years later.—Ed.]—Herwegh (ap. Ulrici, p. 159): It is not very evident that there is here a misprint. If there were, Leo's suggestion might solve the difficulty. . . . If we retain ‘emulation’ then, according to my opinion, it must be understood that they exult over their rivalry with the nobles for the dominance, or rather over the happy success of that rivalry.

Fiue Tribunes For an account of the establishment of the office of Tribuni Plebis, and the rights and functions of those officers, see Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome, ed. Schmitz, vol. i, pp. 142-146; and also Mommsen, History of Rome, trans. Dickson, vol. i, pp. 280-294.—Ed.

One's . . . the City Walker (Crit., iii, 207): Perhaps we should write and point: ‘—One's Junius Brutus, one
Sicinius Velutus, and—I know not—
Sdeath!
The rabble should,’ etc.

Sicinius Velutus C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): The omitted word another, which is elliptically understood before ‘Sicinius Velutus,’ and the abruptly broken-off sentence, admirably aid to express the speaker's haughty petulance.

Sdeath Wordsworth (Historical Plays, i, 116): The common text has ‘'S death’ = God's death!—an exclamation which occurs nowhere else in our author, and is singularly unsuitable in the mouth of a heathen. [See Text. Notes.]

Win vpon power Rann: That is, Gain ground from such concessions, which will be improved into fresh occasions of insurrection.—R. G. White: Should we not read ‘Win open power’? The rhythm and the sense of the passage leave me hardly a doubt that we should.—W. A. Wright: That is, get the advantage over authority. So in Ant. & Cleo., II, iv, 9, ‘You'll win two days upon me’; that is, you will get the advantage of me by two days. Compare ‘got on the Antiates,’ III, iii, 5.—Deighton explains this as ‘gradually make an inroad upon the power wielded by the nobles’; and objects to White's suggestion, ‘open,’ since ‘the text seems better to indicate the gradual process.’ [It is somewhat difficult, I think, to get the force of Deighton's objection; the preceding words ‘will in time’ convey the idea of gradual progress quite as well in one case as the other. As to the other words in this line Deighton adds: ‘It seems tempting to read “throe forth,” as in Ant. & Cleo., III, vii, 81, “With news the time's in labour, and throes forth, Each minute, some.”’—Ed.]—Verity (Student's Sh.): That is, encroach on the aristocracy (‘the powerful class’).—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): That is, take advantage of the power won to win more.

For Insurrections arguing Malone: That is, for insurgents to debate upon. —Verity (Student's Sh.): Coriolanus shows true political insight. He recognises in the Tribunes the foes of his own class, and the contest between them and him is foreshadowed early. His prophecy, in fact, is a piece of dramatic irony.

241. Mar. Heere, etc.] E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): The insurrection has

been well nigh quelled not by the methods of Menenius or Coriolanus, but by the grant of tribunes. The outbreak of war completes the business. And now the finer side of Coriolanus, to which our attention is to be directed in this act, comes into play. At the first whisper of danger he becomes the champion of Rome. His high-bred courtesy towards his fellow captains contrasts markedly with his former manner towards the Plebeians.

I am glad on't . . . superfluity Verity (Student's Sh.): The spirit which prompts these words is surely that which ultimately leads to his great wrong done against his country. [In the remaining part of this sentence] there is an echo of a sentence in North's Plutarch. Velitræ, a Latin town, being depopulated by a plague, prayed the Romans to send them ‘new inhabitants to replenish’ their town. The Senate thought this would be a good way of getting rid of many ‘mutinous and seditious persons, being the superfluous ill humours that grievously fed this disease’ of civil turmoil at Rome.

vent W. A. Wright: That is, to dispose of, get rid of. See l. 217 above, and III, i, 310.—Deighton also takes ‘vent’ as here meaning to get rid of, but further explains it as ‘to sell, and the idea is that of getting rid to foreigners of goods not fit for home consumption, here, of course, by getting them killed off.’ As corroboration of this use of ‘vent’ Deighton quotes Skeat (Dict., s. v. Vent. 3.), who gives as an example: ‘The Merchant adventurers likewise . . . did hold out bravely; taking off the commodities, . . . though they lay dead upon their hands for want of vent,’ Bacon, Life of Henry VII, ed. Lumby, p. 146, l. 6.

'tis true . . . told vs Johnson: Coriolanus had been just told himself that ‘the Volces were in arms.’ The meaning is: ‘The intelligence which you gave us some little time ago of the designs of the Volces is now verified; they are in arms.’—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): This is not in Plutarch. It is

devised by Shakespeare, apparently to show the importance to the Senate of the special skilled knowledge of Martius, just confirmed to him and to the Senate, also to shorten time for dramatic purposes, by making the war seem possible at once.

They haue a Leader . . . onely he Verity (Student's Sh.): This prepares us for scenes ii. and viii. of this Act. The early introduction of Aufidius into the action of Coriolanus is one of the most effective features of Shakespeare's use of the materials supplied him by Plutarch.

together? W. A. Wright: The folios print this as a question, and there seems no good reason for changing the note of interrogation, as Capell did, to a full stop.—Beeching (Falcon Sh.), in defense of the full stop, says: ‘But Cominius could not have been ignorant of the fact (see I, x, 9), and it is better to take it as a soldier's explanation of Marcius's praise.’ [The Text. Notes will show that, in this question of punctuation, Beeching is on the side of the majority of editors. —Ed.]

Were halfe . . . with him Gervinus (p. 753): In this declaration how delicately is a very characteristic stain cast on the valour of Coriolanus! He betrays by these words that his personal renown is of more value to him than his party, his cause, his country; he would fight as a hireling against Aufidius, no matter on which side!—Boas (Sh. & His Predecessors, p. 489): Like Hotspur, Coriolanus cares far more for personal glory than for the triumph of a common cause, as is shown by his declaration about the Volscian general, Tullus Aufidius. . . . This is to treat war merely as a gigantic duel between rival champions, and to ignore those patriotic aspects of it which alone give it moral justification. It is the same exaggerated passion for solely personal distinction that makes Coriolanus reject all material rewards for his services. He feels that the glory of achievements such as his is tarnished by the acceptance of spoils, however splendid, and similarly he refuses to listen to any laudation of his deeds not from humility, but because he deems them above the reach of due recognition by the voices of his fellow-men.—Prolss (p. 93): Here there is made evident a new virtue in Marcius—he is without hate and envy. He recognises without reservation the

characteristics of another, though that other be an opponent, perhaps freely only, since he is of equal rank with Aufidius. He does not feel himself thereby repressed, but his self-confidence is so much the more exalted. He cannot desire strongly enough a veritable heroic nature for his adversary. Yet another virtue should be visible in him: that is the willingness with which, in spite of his pride, he submits himself to those above him in command.—Beeching (Falcon Sh.): This is not said altogether seriously, but there is truth in it. Men who are soldiers before everything have not seldom been careless as to the side on which they fought.

I am constant Steevens: That is, immoveable in my resolution. So, in Jul. Cæs., ‘But I am constant as the northern star,’ [III, i, 60].

What . . . stiffe? Stand'st out W. A. Wright: That is, are you obstinate? dost thou resist or stand aloof? Compare Twelfth Night, III, iii, 35: ‘Only myself stood out.’—[Rolfe and Case (Arden Sh.) interpret ‘stiff’ here as meaning, rather, stiff with age; ‘the reply of Titus,’ remarks Rolfe, ‘seems to favor this interpretation.’ For other examples of the omission of thou in peremptory and familiar questions, see Abbott, § 241.—Ed.]

Lead you on . . . worthy you Priority . . . Martius Theobald, in a letter to Warburton, dated Feb. 12, 1729, rejects the change in F4 of ‘you’

to your, l. 273, and interprets the First Folio reading: ‘You being right worthy of precedence.’ ‘But there are still more faults in this passage,’ continues Theobald, ‘which I make no question should be thus rectified: “— Lead you on;
Follow, Cominius; we must follow you;
Right worthy you priority.
Com. Noble Lartius!”

Titus Lartius first desires the general Senators to lead the way; then tells Cominius that he well deserves to go first in rank; and therefore, I think, Cominius, to return that compliment, says, Noble Lartius!’ (Nichols: Lit. Illust., ii, 479). This rectification of the pointing of the Folio text Theobald adopts in his own edition, and this arrangement has been accepted, substantially, by subsequent editors.—Malone, without referring to the distribution of speeches in this passage, interprets l. 273 in the identical words of Theobald, though, in the nature of the case, it was quite improbable that he could have seen Theobald's letter which was not published until 1817, more than twenty-five years after Malone's edition appeared.—Walker (Crit., ii, pp. 190 et seq.) will furnish ample corroboration, if such be needed, for the change of ‘you’ to your in this line. Confusion of these two words, as Walker shows by many examples, is frequent in the Folio. He there quotes this present line, and among the more striking instances the following: Titus Andronicus, III, i, p. 41, col. 2, ‘Now stay you strife, what shall be is dispatcht.’ Ibid., IV, ii, p. 44, col. ii, ‘Heere lack's but you mother for to say, Amen.’ Hamlet, V, i, near the end, p. 279, col. 1, ‘Strengthen you patience in our last night's speech.’—On the other hand, Malone's explanation seems to render any change of the text unnecessary, and Abbott (§ 198a) gives examples wherein ‘the preposition is omitted after some verbs that imply value or worth.’ Compare ‘Some precepts worthy the note,’ All's Well, III, v, 104.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare) adopt Malone's interpretation of l. 273, and add: ‘It appears to us that in this speech Titus Lartius addresses the words “Lead you on” to the Senators; then bids Cominius follow them; adding “we” (Coriolanus and himself) “must follow you”; concluding with, for you are right worthy of that precedence which your appointment as commander-general gives you.’—In disagreement with Theobald's change of ‘Martius,’ l. 274, to Lartius the Cowden Clarkes thus continue: ‘We think this is Cominius's sentence of courtesy to Coriolanus (intended probably to be accompanied by an inclination of the head), in passing to go before him, according to the appointed “priority.” It, as it were, acknowledges the speaker's sense of Coriolanus's right of precedence, even while he takes it himself in deference to the Senate's decree.’—Ulrici (Zusätze und Berichtigungen, p. 175): Several English editors take this, that Lartius commands Cominius to precede and Coriolanus to follow. The whole passage first gains sense and meaning when the honour of precedence is granted to Coriolanus. Titus Lartius stands on an equal footing with Cominius. Only with such an interpretation is there significance if Cominius, to express his complete agreement, turns to Coriolanus with the words, ‘Noble Martius’; and Theobald's emendation ‘Lartius’ becomes unnecessary.—Rolfe: It is doubtful whether this is addressed to Cominius, as the Cam. Edd. take it [see Text. Notes,] or to the Senators, as generally understood; but we incline to the latter view. [The distribution of

speeches by the Cam. Edd.] gives the precedence to Cominius, as general-in-chief, and allots the next place to Marcius; but ‘Lead you on’ seems rather to be a reply to the Senator, who has just spoken. [The remainder of Rolfe's note is substantially the same as the concluding sentence of the foregoing note by the Cowden Clarkes. —Ed.]

Mutiners Walker (Vers., p. 222) gives several examples from Elizabethan writers wherein this word is accented as here, metri gratiâ, on the first syllable.—Abbott (& 492) quotes Walker on this point, but remarks that he ‘cannot find a conclusive instance in Shakespeare.’—Ed.

puts well forth Johnson: That is, you have in this mutiny shown fair blossoms of valour.—Malone: So in Henry VIII: ‘Today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms,’ III, ii, 352.

Exeunt . . . Manet Sicin. & Brutus Verity (Student's Sh.): According to the modern method of dramatic construction—the method, that is, of making the curtain fall at the climax of the scene—this scene would close, I should think, at the exit of Coriolanus. Shakespeare, however, allows characters to remain behind, as the Tribunes remain here, and wind up the scene with further comments or some slight extension of the action. Thus in Richard II, I, iii, when the stirring scene at the lists at Coventry has culminated in the King's passing sentence on the rivals and then sweeping from the field with all his train, Gaunt and Bolingbroke stay behind for an interview which a modern playwright would throw into a scene. Cf. again Mid. N. Dream, I, i, 127, where strictly it is an artificial device to let Hermia and Lysander remain behind together, while her father, Egeus, who is angry with Lysander for stealing her affections, leaves the stage with all the others. Another illustration is the conversation between Goneril and Regan at the end of the first scene in Lear. In such continuations of the scene there is some risk of an anti-climax. I think that this peculiar feature of the structure of Shakespeare's plays is attributable to the scenic poverty of the Elizabethan stage, on which Shakespeare himself dwells

so strongly in the first and fourth Prologues of Henry V. In the Elizabethan theatre there was no curtain to fall, and practically no scenery to mark a change of scene. Hence the tendency was to extend a scene instead of starting a fresh one in a fresh locality, as if the playwright thought that certain of his personæ might as well stay behind as go off and return to the same spot.

Sicin. & Brutus S. Lee (Caxton Sh., Introd., p. xxxiv.): These representatives of the popular faction, with whom Coriolanus has no bond of sympathy, are the primary instruments of his ruin, and the contrast between their natures and the character of the hero is drawn in high relief. The demagogues are corrupt and cowardly bullies, and the rabble whom they dupe, although it has some brighter aspects, is mainly characterised by fickleness and gullible ignorance.

gird the Gods W. A. Wright: That is, to taunt them, use sarcasm against them. Falstaff (2 Henry IV: I, ii, 7) says of himself, ‘Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me.’ And in Earle's Microcosmographie, 6, we find the same construction as here: ‘His life is a perpetuale Satyre, and hee is still girding the ages vanity’ (ed. Arber, p. 28). To ‘gird’ (or ‘gyrd’) originally signified to smite or strike, and hence in its figurative sense a ‘gird’ or jest is analogous to bob, which originally meant a blow or rap . . . That the original meaning of the word was blow is evident from Tam. of Shrew, V, ii, 58: ‘Bap. O ho, Petruchio! Tranio hits you now. Luc. I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio.’

The present Warres . . . so valiant Theobald: This is very obscurely express'd; but the Poet's meaning must certainly be this. Marcius is so conscious of, and so elate upon the notion of his own valour, that he is eaten up with Pride; devour'd with the apprehension of that Glory which he promises himself from the ensuing war. A sentiment like this occurs again in Tro. & Cress.: ‘He that is proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise,’ [II, iii, 164 et seq.]—Warburton: According to this Critic [Theobald]

then we must conclude that when Shakespeare had a mind to say A man was eaten up with pride, he was so great a blunderer in expression as to say He was eaten up with war. But our poet wrote at a different rate, and the blunder is his critic's. ‘The present wars devour him’ is an imprecation and should be so pointed. As much as to say, May he fall in those wars! The reason of the curse is subjoined, for (says the speaker), having so much pride with so much valour, his life, with increase of honours, is dangerous to the republic.—[The arrogant and contemptuous tone of the foregoing doubtless caused—as the writer intended— both consternation and pain, coming as it did from one who but a few short years before had subscribed himself in many letters, ‘ever, my dearest friend, yours affectionately, W. Warburton.’ The head and front of Theobald's offence was that he had not, as Warburton thought, been sufficiently recognisant of the deep obligation he was under for the various notes and emendations which Warburton had contributed for Theobald's own edition. Warburton made no mention of the fact that Hanmer, his preceding editor, prints this line as an imprecation with an exclamation point instead of the Folio's comma after ‘him’; and Hanmer does not refer to Warburton as the source of this pointing. Hanmer should, therefore, I think, be given credit for this reading in spite of Warburton's elucidation.— Ed.]—Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 82): Pointed [as an imprecation] in the two latter moderns [Han. and Warb.], and properly, but what the first of them has put in his text in the line after this he should have put as a gloss; for of being so valiant is, indeed, the sense which the Poet intended in ‘to be so valiant,’ though a more refin'd one is pitch'd upon for it by the last of those gentlemen.—Steevens: I am by no means convinced that Dr Warburton's punctuation or explanation is right. The sense may be that ‘the present wars annihilate his gentler qualities.’ To eat up and, consequently, to devour has this meaning. So in 2 Henry IV: ‘But thou [the crown] most fine, most honour'd, most renown'd, Hast eat thy bearer up,’ IV, v, 165. To be ‘eat up with pride’ is still a phrase in common and vulgar use. ‘He is grown too proud to be so valiant’ may signify ‘his pride is such as not to deserve the accompanying of so much valour.’ [‘But it is difficult to see,’ comments W. A. Wright on the foregoing, ‘how “the present wars,” in which Coriolanus had not yet been engaged, can denote the military reputation derived from his past achievements.’—Ed.]—Malone: I concur with Mr Steevens. ‘The present wars’ Shakespeare uses to express the pride of Coriolanus grounded on his military prowess; which kind of pride Brutus says devours him. [Malone, without referring to his predecessor, quotes a portion of the passage from Tro. & Cress. as in the foregoing note by Theobald, and thus concludes:] Perhaps the meaning of the latter member of the sentence is, ‘he is grown too proud of being so valiant, to be endured.’—Croft (p. 18): ‘The present wars devour him,’ i. e., quite absorb or monopolize his thoughts; he is too proud of his valour, that he is so valiant occasions too much pride.—Delius: May the present campaign overwhelm him or destroy him; he has been too proud, that he is so valiant; the consciousness of his bravery has made him so overbearing that he should live no longer. Those editors who take ‘devour’ as the indicative and so punctuate, obscure the sense. —Staunton: The beginning of this speech which has been explained—his pride of military prowess in these wars devours him—we prefer to read, with Warburton, as an imprecation. The latter words appear to import [as Malone explains them].—Walker (Crit., iii, 207) is in favor of reading l. 288 according to

Hanmer's pointing.—Abbott (§ 356): To was originally used not with the infinitive, but with the gerund in -e, and, like the Latin ‘ad’ with the gerund, denoted a purpose. Thus ‘to love’ was originally ‘to lovene,’ i e., ‘to (or toward) loving’ (ad amandum). Gradually, as to superseded the proper infinitival inflection, to was used in other and more indefinite senses, ‘for,’ ‘about,’ ‘in,’ ‘as regards,’ and, in a word, for any form of the gerund as well as for the infinitive. [Among other examples of the infinitive thus indefinitely used Abbott quotes and paraphrases l. 289: ‘Too proud to be (of being) so valiant.’ Also: ‘“To fright you thus methinks I am too savage.”—Macbeth, IV, ii, 70. Not “too savage to fright you,” but “in or for frighting you.”’—Ed.]—Dyce (ed. ii.) discards the Folio pointing and, without comment, adopts Hanmer's.—Hudson (ed. i.) follows the Folio pointing, explaining the line, ‘his pride on account of his valour and success in “the present wars” devours him.’ Hudson likewise gives the line from Tro. & Cress., ‘He that is proud eats up himself,’ which both Theobald and Malone had already quoted in support of this; and Hudson concludes his note with Malone's interpretation of the latter part of the sentence. In his ed. ii. Hudson, influenced, as ever, by Dyce, makes a complete recantation, and without reference to his former opinion says: ‘The first part of this speech is imprecative: “May the present war devour him!” that is, make an end of him.’ In conclusion he retains his agreement with Malone.—Keightley, both in his Expositor and in his text, adopts Hanmer's punctuation; he likewise explains ‘to be,’ l. 289, as the gerundial infinitive with Malone and Hudson.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): This is elliptically expressed, but we think the sense is obviously, ‘The wars absorb him wholly: he is grown too proud of being so valiant.’ In the speech of Gower, as Chorus, in Pericles, IV, iv, we find: ‘And Pericles in sorrow all devoured,’ [l. 25;] and to be ‘devoured by grief’ or ‘eaten up by pride’ are idioms still in use. We think, therefore, that the idea of ‘pride in his own valour, strengthened by the occasion for its display afforded by these wars, devours him entirely’ is presented by this sentence.—Leo (Coriolanus): That is, May he perish in the present wars! The consciousness of his being so valiant has made him too proud. [The complete suppression of the fact that such an interpretation of l. 288 is based upon a modern text and not upon the Folio reading may seem somewhat singular. In fairness to Leo it may, however, be stated that such an omission is, I think, an example of an avowed purpose in his Edition of Coriolanus. In his Preface, p. vi, where, among other features which should constitute an ideal edition of Shakespeare, he says: ‘Every passage that has succeeded in establishing its title to respect, either by the agreement of the old editions or of later emendators, should be adopted in the text, without the slightest mention of all arguments for and against, which hitherto have been bandied about respecting it. The mention of them is not of the least advantage to the public, and does not at all advance the purification of the text. There are emendations which have stood the ordeal of time, and the errors they are intended to remove, the errors of copyists, printers, and early editors, errors which the rust of centuries has consecrated in the eyes of fanatics, might at length be consigned to a lasting repose.’—Ed.]—Rev. John Hunter: ‘Devour him,’ that is, Take up all his thoughts; engage his whole soul; actuate his whole conduct. We similarly say of a very proud person that he is eaten up with pride. ‘The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up,’ Psalm lxix, 9, and John, ii, 17, [where this verse from the Psalm is quoted.—Ed.].—Rolfe:

We take this to be the expression of a wish, as Hanmer makes it.—Perring (p. 286): The punctuation of the Folio, though not always to be depended upon, may [here] be accepted with confidence; it certainly is not an advantageous exchange to put a note of exclamation after ‘The present wars devour him’; the Tribunes are telling each other what they think of Coriolanus; how proud he was; how he had scorned and taunted them when they were appointed tribunes; they aggravate his offence by the remark, while perhaps they comfort themselves by the reflection, that even the gods themselves—those most high sacrosanct irresponsible arbiters —even the moon, the very ideal of modesty, he would not scruple to ‘gird’—to mock at; what wonder, then, if their tribunitian majesty, their tribunitian modesty he despised, he insulted! And now what further? Do they, as some would have it, invoke a curse on Coriolanus, and wish him perdition by the wars? No such thing. ‘This man,’ they continue, ‘who has no regard for god or tribune, what does he care for?’ ‘The wars’—for the poet here, with a license which is common to him . . . uses the plural form as an exact equivalent of the singular, an example of which we have in Cymb., IV, iii, 43, where ‘These present wars’ is said of a war then instant—‘the wars’ then, or, as we may express it, the war, such as at that very moment was brewing with the Volsci—‘this is his devouring passion; he is carried away, he is swallowed up, he is wholly absorbed by the war; and this is how he has grown—grown far “too proud”; and the reason he is so proud is because he is so valiant.’ Such I conceive to be a fair gloss on a much misconceived passage, though I am not quite sure that I have correctly expounded just the fag end of it. —Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.) follows Hanmer without either note or comment; in the Falcon Ed., some five years later, he accepts the Folio reading, placing an exclamation point after ‘grown,’ but this is doubtless a misprint. In the latter edition Beeching, in reference to l. 288, says: ‘Is this a statement or an imprecation? The Folio has a comma; reading which the sense will be, “These warlike times spoil him by making him proud; the pride of valour devours him.” Cf. Tro. & Cress., II, iii, 164, “He that's proud eats up himself.” This sense seems to suit best with the speech of Sicinius which follows. If it be construed as an imprecation, the present wars will mean “the war now set on foot.”’—Wordsworth (Historical Plays, i, 116), in explanation for his omission of these lines, says: ‘The former clause, though probably imprecative, is doubtful; the latter, though capable of explanation, is unbearably harsh.’—Page [follows Hanmer's reading, but adds:] The Folio reading may be right, in the sense of ‘His military pride, elated at the thought of acquiring additional glory in the impending war, takes complete possession of him.’—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.) follows the Folio, but remarks that ‘“devour him” is rather an optative than an indicative. Brutus goes on, “Such valour, coupled with such pride, is dangerous.”’—Verity (Student's Sh.), following Hanmer, remarks that ‘the passage is commonly interpreted thus’ as an imprecation, and after quoting Perring's interpretation of the Folio reading, says in conclusion, ‘But the allusion to particular wars (“the present wars”) surely does not suit a general description of Coriolanus's character. One would have expected “War” personified, with some epithet descriptive of its general attributes, or “the wars” (without “present”).’—Stanley Wood (Oxford & Cambridge Sh.): That is, he is consumed with pride, the result of his triumphs in war.—H. D. Weiser, following Hanmer, says: ‘Not to be regarded as an assertion, in view of the fears expressed in the remainder of Brutus's words.’—Case (Arden Shakespeare):

Mr Craig evidently intended to retain this, practically the Folio punctuation, [i. e., a semicolon instead of a comma], though he had not set down his reasons. The sentence stretches with difficulty to a meaning which is perhaps expressed as well as anywhere else by Perring [see ante]. . . . The objection to the interpretation that the present wars would not be given as the cause of a permanent characteristic of Coriolanus does not seem altogether valid if we consider that it is not the existence of the quality of pride in him, but its excessive manifestation at the time that has given rise to the dialogue. After all, most readers will prefer the usual punctuation (Hanmer's) and sense: May he fall in these wars!—[In all cases where the Folio text or punctuation yields an intelligible meaning it should, I think, be retained; that it does so in the present instance is manifest by the several paraphrases given in the foregoing notes. On the other hand, while Hanmer's and Warburton's change is more forcible than the original, it is actually a refinement of expression and is, therefore, meo judicio, unnecessary. I have placed in the Text. Notes the names of those editors only who have followed Hanmer's pointing without comment, since, in general, a reading given in the commentary is not repeated in the Text. Notes.—Ed.]

good successe W. A. Wright: In Shakespeare's time ‘success’ was frequently a colourless word, which required a qualifying adjective ‘good’ or ‘ill.’ Compare Joshua, i, 8: ‘Then thou shalt have good success.’ The modern usage is, however, also common in Shakespeare. See I, ix, 90. [See also Macbeth, I, vii, 3, 4, ‘and catch With his surcease success,’ where ‘success’ means simply termination.—Ed.]

the shadow Beeching (Falcon Sh.): A man's imaginary conduct to his shadow is used by Shakespeare several times as an illustration of character. Gratiano will fence with his shadow (Mer. of Ven., I, ii, 66); Malvolio practises behaviour to his (Twelfth Night, II, v, 21); a drunkard is one who discourses fustian with his (Othello, II, iii, 282); a madman curses his for a traitor (Lear, III, iv, 58); ‘Coriolanus's solitariness’ (as Plutarch called it) or ‘singularity’ (l. 311) could not be better expressed.

brooke Skeat (Dict., s. v. (1)): To endure, put up with. Mid. Eng. brouke, which almost invariably had the sense of ‘to use’ or ‘to enjoy.’

to be commanded W. A. Wright: That is, to be entrusted with a command. ‘Commanded’ is here formed from the substantive and not from the verb. See l. 113 ante; I, iv, 21; III, i, 77, [‘dishonour'd’]; V, ii, 83, and compare

‘the guiled shore’ in Mer. of Ven., III, ii, 97; and ‘the ravin'd salt sea shark,’ Macbeth, IV, i, 24.

Fame . . . the businesse Case (Arden Sh.): Brutus utterly mistakes the character of Caius Marcius. But he was a man of ignoble soul, and so naturally inclined to believe the worst.

cry out of Martius That is, cry out concerning or about Marcius. Abbott (§ 174) will furnish many examples of this meaning. This were hardly worth the noting were it not that Schmidt takes exception to the silence of other editors on this point, which reticence he thinks takes it too easily for granted that ‘of’ here means about or concerning. ‘But this,’ he says, ‘after “cry out” is impossible’; and therefore declares that it is ‘more likely that “of” here stands for on, as exactly similar in “he cried out of sack,” [Henry V: II, iii, 297], ‘he called out for sack.’—In this last passage ‘of’ means, as in the present line, about, and not as Schmidt takes it. Is it necessary to instance as examples the titles to each of Bacon's Essays?—Ed.

Opinion that . . . Cominius Roderick (ap. Edwards, Canons, etc., p. 275): This passage, as it stands here, presents us with a strange kind of mock-reasoning. Brutus and Sicinius are reasoning together about Martius's contenting himself with the second place in the army, leaving the first to Cominius. ‘Herein (says Brutus) he acts prudently; for, Fame being his motive, and he having already an established character, he by this means less risks the losing of it. For, in case of any miscarriage, the fault will be thrown on Cominius, the General; and giddy censurers will be apt enough to cry: It would have been otherwise if Martius had had the management!’ To this observation Sicinius might very pertinently add the following: ‘That, moreover, if things should go well the opinion of the people was so firmly to Martius that he would certainly carry off some part of the praise due to Cominius.’ And this sense will be obtained: ‘Opinion, that so sticks on Martius,
Shall of his merits rob Cominius.’

Thus the passage goes on very sensibly. Brutus remarks, ‘That by his inferiority of place he would quit himself of all the disgrace of any miscarriage,’ and Sicinius

adds, ‘That by his superiority in character he would possess himself of more than his true share of merit in any success.’ Or, probably, Merit and Demerit did in Shakespeare's time mean the same thing, as they certainly did originally, the supposed opposition in the sense of these words being comparatively modern and, as I apprehend, altogether fantastical. [Had Roderick but ascertained the truth in regard to the sense of the words merit and ‘demerit’ before writing his remark, he might have spared himself this rather verbose paraphrase, with its needless alteration of text and line. See next note by Steevens.—Ed.]

demerits Steevens: Merits and ‘demerits’ had anciently the same meaning. So, in Othello, ‘My demerits May speak unbonneted,’ [II, ii, 22].

Come Dyce (ed. ii.): Mr W. N. Lettsom, after proposing an entirely new distribution of the dialogue here between Sicinius and Brutus, remarks: ‘The word “Come” is evidently displaced, and should be inserted, if at all, either before “Let's hence” or “Let's along.” The metre will allow either.’

Sicin. Let's hence Beeching (Falcon Sh.): The two Tribunes are not much discriminated in character. Speeches are often divided between them, as above. (See especially II, iii, ad fin.) Sicinius has more initiative, perhaps, as being the senior.

More then his singularity Johnson: We will learn what he is to do besides going himself; what are his powers, and what is his appointment.—Steevens: Perhaps the word ‘singularity’ implies a sarcasm on Coriolanus, and the speaker means to say, after what fashion, beside that in which his own singularity of disposition invests him, he goes into the field. So in Twelfth Night, ‘Put thyself into the trick of singularity,’ [II, v, 164].—Pye (p. 242): The passage is very obscure and wants explanation, which is very properly given by Dr Johnson. There seems no meaning in the question according to the suggestion of Steevens. There is also an inaccuracy of construction in his note; he goes should be either does he go, goes he.—Verplanck: That is, More than the fashion of his own singular and perverse character, says the sneering Tribune. Such I take to be the sense.—Staunton: As ‘singularity’ formerly implied pre-eminence, Sicinius may mean, sarcastically, after what fashion, beside his usual assumption of superiority.—Leo, apparently unaware that he is anticipated by Hanmer, proposes to change ‘his’ to this; he also retains the Folio reading of ‘fashion’ without its following comma (see Text. Notes), and thus explains the lines: ‘The Tribunes had just been speaking about the singular fashion of arrangement

between Cominius and Marcius; they now go to the Capitol to see “in what fashion more”—in what further fashion, beside the just mentioned singularity— “he goes upon this present action.”’—[Schmidt (Lex., s. v.) quotes the present line, adding in parentheses, ‘independently from his peculiar private character.’] —Ulrici (Zusätze und Berichtigungen, p. 175): I read with Hanmer and Leo this instead of ‘his,’ because by such reading only can this passage have a meaning. But ‘singularity’ cannot, meo judicio, refer, as Leo thinks, to the special arrangement already mentioned as made between Cominius and Coriolanus; since an ‘arrangement’ has not been concluded, and ‘singularity’ with Shakespeare always has the meaning peculiarity, strangeness, remarkable. Sicinius means the peculiarity of Coriolanus, in preferring to place himself under Cominius rather than lead the army himself.—Whitelaw: Ironical. ‘This paragon of generals, how he is accompanied’; ‘with what force—over and above his own great self—he takes the field.’—Page: The reference is, of course, to Marcius and his peculiarities of temperament.—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): That is, with what troops, to back up his personal valour, which will count for more than anything in the expedition.— Verity (Student's Sh.): The meaning seems to me: ‘let us see in what manner, beyond his usual peculiarity of character, he enters upon the war,’ i. e., whether with an exceptional manifestation of his usual pride. Radically singularity means ‘the state or character of being singular’ (literally and figuratively); hence ‘individual or personal peculiarity,’ whence the easily derived idea ‘oddity, eccentricity.’ . . . Malvolio is advised in the letter (II, v, 164): ‘Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants, . . . put thyself into the trick of singularity,’ on which he comments: ‘I will be proud, . . . I will wash off gross acquaintance.’ There, as here, the essential notion seems to me to be ‘unlike to other people, apart from others,’ and the nearest rendering is ‘peculiarity.’—Gordon: That is, over and above his natural singularity (which, Sicinius implies, may be taken for granted in anything he may do).

along For examples of ‘along’ thus used without a verb of motion, see, if needful, Abbott, § 30.

William Shakespeare. Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D. The Tragedie of Coriolanus. Philadelphia and London. J. B. Lippincott Company.

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William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

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William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

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William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.