[Scene V.]
Murrain W. A. Wright: Murrain, which is properly a cattle plague (see Mid. N. Dream, II, i, 97), is used in such execrations like ‘plague’ itself. See Temp., III, ii, 88: ‘A murrain on your monster!’ and Tro. & Cress., II, i, 20: ‘A red murrain o' thy jade's tricks!’ The word was also used of human diseases. In Stow's Summarie (1565), fol. 28a, under the date 1094, is a marginal note, ‘Great morein of men.’ [According to Skeat (Dict., s. v.) the word is closely allied to Old French morine, a dead carcass.—Ed.]
mouers Whitelaw: These clamourers for their rights, these disturbers of the State.—Schmidt (Coriolanus), for this use of ‘mover’ in the sense of a living, moving creature, compares: ‘O fairest mover in this mortal round.’—Ven. & Ad., l. 368.—W. A. Wright: That is, these active stirring fellows; contemptuously used of the loiterers for plunder. Others take it as equivalent to ‘these agitators.’ Shakespeare elsewhere uses ‘mover’ as he does ‘liver’ in the sense of living creature, a human being simply. See Ven. & Ad., l. 368. There is probably a play upon all these senses in the present instance. hours Johnson, who follows the reading honours of Rowe ii, says: ‘I know not who corrected it. A modern editor who had made such an improvement would have spent half a page in ostentation of his sagacity.’—Malone: Mr Poye arbitrarily changed the word ‘hours’ to honours, and Dr Johnson, too hastily I think, approves of the alteration. Every page of Mr Pope's edition abounds with similar innovations. [This last statement is somewhat of an exaggeration, and, in the present instance at least, Pope is not to blame.—Ed.]—Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 88): ‘Hours’ has a very good meaning, and should not have been chang'd into honours, as it is in the four last editors; the speaker could never think of applying that word to the men he is rating; their loss of time in this pilfering was what engag'd his thoughts most, as is evident from all he says afterwards.—Steevens: Coriolanus blames the Roman soldiers only for wasting their time in packing up trifles of such small value. So, in North's Plutarch, ‘Martius was marvellous angry with them, and cried out on them, that it was no time now to look after spoil and to run straggling here and there to enrich themselves,’ etc.—Wordsworth (Historical Plays, i, 118) justifies his omission of this and part of the next line on the ground that ‘If the reading be correct, the sentiment is awkwardly and harshly expressed.’
Drachme Abbott (§ 486) and Browne (p. 16) mark drachm, as in modern texts, as a dissyllable. Smith (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities) gives the value of the drachma as about 9d 3 farthings.—Ed.
of a Doit W. A. Wright: That is, of a doit in value, worth but a doit. A doit was the smallest piece of money (German deut, Dutch duit), and was worth half a farthing. For ‘of’ with the price of anything compare Meas. for Meas., II, i, 95: ‘A dish of some three pence.’ See IV, iv, 23. Dublets . . . that wore them Malone: Instead of taking them as their lawful perquisite.—W. A. Wright: Shakespeare dressed his ancient Romans like the English of his own day. (See Jul. Cæs., I, ii, 264.) In the same way he makes the English custom of giving to executioners the clothes of their victims as a perquisite prevail in Rome.—[‘And of universal custom, also, it may be,’ adds Miss C. Porter, ‘the Roman custom, being indicated when the soldiers of Rome, who executed Christ, cast lots for his vesture.’]
Then Valiant Wordsworth (Historical Plays, i, 118): Shakespeare uses ‘valiant’ as either dissyllable or trisyllable. Here, if it is to stand at all, the metre seems to require the omission of the preceding ‘then,’ which perhaps is otherwise desirable, to mark the abruptness with which Marcius would here naturally address Titus. Accordingly, I have left it out.
thou bleed'st In dialogue as sharp and forceful as is here intended it is, I think, needless to require absolute consistency in the use of ‘thou’ and ‘you.’ It will, however, be noticed that Lartius uniformly addresses Martius with ‘thou’; Martius says, ‘Fare you well’ (l. 22), but in l. 29 says, ‘Thy friend.’ Shakespeare's use of the two forms is in many cases quite consistent with the situation of the characters and the incident, as is shown by Abbott, §§ 232, 233, 234. —Ed.
a second course Deighton: As though fighting were as a feast to him, with an allusion to the second or principal course of viands at a dinner; compare Macbeth, II, ii, 39: ‘Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care . . . great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast’; and below, I, ix, 14: ‘Yet cam'st thou to a morsel of this feast Having fully dined before.’—Case (Arden Sh.), in reference to the foregoing note by Deighton, says: ‘It more probably means bout, encounter of fight; see Tragedy of Hoffman, 1631, Act II. ad init., “Well Ile trie one course with thee at the halfe pike,” etc. The N. E. D. gives Course, The rush together of two combatants in battle or tournament; charge, onset; a passage at arms, bout, encounter. In King Lear, III, vii, 54, Gloucester says: “I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course,” i. e., I must endure a second relay of dogs set upon me.’
praise me not Case (Ibid.): ‘Praise’ is possibly here as in Twelfth Night, I, v, 268, = estimate; do not thus estimate my powers, do not set yourself as a judge of what I can do. In the passage in Twelfth Night Olivia says: ‘I will give out divers schedules of my beauty: . . . Were you sent hither to praise me?’ [It seems hardly necessary to find any meaning for ‘praise’ here other than its usual one. Marcius deprecates any commendation yet, as he is but at the beginning of what he intends doing.—Ed.]
thy Opposers Walker (Crit., ii, 233): ‘The opposers’—i. e., the enemies'— ut passim apud S. The metre (as it seems to me) and the sense both require this; for ‘thy opposers’ would properly mean Coriolanus's personal enemies, not the Volscians. Also Love's Labour's, I, i, 235: ‘I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air.’—Dyce (ed. ii.), in reference to the foregoing remark, says: ‘I believe that “thy opposers” is what the author wrote—meaning “thy opponents—those of the enemy who shall oppose thee.” In II, ii, 103 Cominius mentions that Coriolanus, when only a stripling, slew “three opposers” in battle; and in IV, iii, 33 we have “his great opposer, Coriolanus.”’
those Orger (p. 58): There are many passages in Shakespeare which seem to indicate that he used ‘those’ for a genitive plural, as their or theirs, which use in these places might be marked by an apostrophe, those'. This has not been observed by Dr Abbott in his account of his pronouns, but deserves, I think, consideration as affording an easy solution of constructions otherwise exceedingly irregular, e. g., II, ii, 25, ‘his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those, who,’ etc., i. e., as theirs who. Again, Rich. III: I, iii, 217: ‘If heaven have any grievous plagues in store Exceeding those that I can wish on thee,’ i. e., exceeding ‘theirs,’ the plagues, viz., which she had been imprecating on the others, which might seem to have exhausted her power of cursing, and the line should be read: ‘Exceeding those' that I can wish on thee.’ [Does not ‘those’ there refer directly to the ‘plagues,’ and not to any previous imprecations of Anne?—Ed.] Again, in Mer. of Ven., I, i, 97: ‘—would almost damn those ears Which hearing them would call their brothers fools.’ And in Henry VIII: II, i, 152: ‘To stop the rumour and allay those tongues That durst disperse it.’ ‘Those ears’ and ‘those tongues’ may mean those hearers and those speakers, as in French they call a person a mauvaise langue who speaks evil of others. But it will be scarcely possible to understand on the same principle Pericles, I, iv, 39, ‘Those palates, who,’ and I, iv, 34, ‘These mouths, whom.’
Go sound W. A. Wright: The comma after ‘Go,’ which has been inserted in most modern editions, has no right to be there. Compare Temp., I, ii, 301, ‘Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea’; and in the same play, II, i, 190, ‘Go sleep, and hear us.’
Away Walker (Vers., p. 273) arranges this line ending with the word ‘minde,’ and places the single word ‘Away’ in a line by itself, for the reason that ‘lines of eight or nine syllables, as they are at variance with the general rhythm of Shakespeare's poetry, so they scarcely ever occur in his plays—it were hardly too much to say, not at all.’ Besides the present line, among other examples, Walker gives from Cymb., IV, iii, near the end: ‘We grieve at chances here. Away,’ which he treats as here, placing ‘Away’ in a line by itself.