[Scene II.]
Scene II. Verity (Student's Sh.): There is a pleasant grimness in the Sentinels' translation of Menenius's self-praise into the mere vernacular. And Menenius's assurance as to his influence with Coriolanus lends the humour inseparable from vanity. But, as ever, humour's twin brother pathos is not far off.
1. Wat. Stay: whence are you. Delius (Die Prosa in Sh's Dramen; Jahrbuch, v, p. 269): The two Sentinels for the most part repulse Menenius in blank verse; when they first begin to lose patience through his importunity they become provoked and speak in prose, which in the mouth of one of them is not lacking in a certain strength and fineness of speech. The entrance of Coriolanus calls forth from Menenius a moving heartfelt tone, which, moreover, by its light humour calls to mind his original nature, and therefore rightly takes on the form of eloquent prose. To this supplication of his former friend Coriolanus replies, aloof and cold, in blank verse.
it is Lots to Blankes Johnson: A ‘lot’ here is a prize.—Capell: What he would here say is, 'Tis odds but my name has been heard by you; now ‘lots’ can have no other sense than fortunate lots, prizes; and certainly the odds never lay on their side in a lottery, but there is a waggery in supposing the contrary, and therefore it is done by Menenius.—S[tephen] W[eston]: Lot in French signifies prize. Le gros lot: The capital prize.—Malone: I believe Dr Johnson here mistakes. Menenius, I imagine, only means to say that it is more than an equal chance that his name has touched their ears. ‘Lots’ were the term in our author's time for the total number of tickets in a lottery, which took its name from thence. So in the Continuation of Stowe's Chronicle, 1615, p. 1002: ‘Out of which lottery, for want of filling, by the number of lots, there were then taken out and thrown away three score thousand blanks, without abating of any one prize.’ The lots were, of course, more numerous than the blanks. If ‘lot’ signified prize, as Dr Johnson supposed, there being in every lottery many more blanks than prizes, Menenius must be supposed to say that the chance of his name having reached their ears was very small, which certainly is not his meaning.—Ritson (Cursory Criticism, p. 80): A lot here, Dr Johnson says, is a prize. It certainly is so; though our sagacious Hibernian [Malone] believes him mistaken. Menenius, he imagines, only means to say that it is more than an equal chance that his name had touch'd their ears, which is precisely the effect of Dr Johnson's explanation. . . . Menenius says it is prizes to blanks, something to nothing, 20,000 l. to a piece of waste paper, &c. A lot is what one gains in the lottery; and our learned editor, no doubt, if he got a blank would say he had gain'd a loss. Neither Shakespeare, however, nor Menenius was an Irishman.—Steevens: ‘Lots to blanks’ is a phrase equivalent to another in Richard III: ‘all the world to nothing,’ [I, ii, 238].—W. A. Wright: This must, as Steevens says, be equivalent to the proverbial phrase in Richard III. Menenius means that the chances are greatly in favour of his name having been mentioned, the comparison being not of the number, but of the relative value of the lots and blanks.—Case: Mr Craig explained, ‘any odds, a thousand to one,’ but retained the reckoning by numbers, not values, as he added ‘literally, lottery tickets which bring a prize to the drawer to those which bring no prize,’ and avoided the dilemma pointed out by Malone by stating, ‘It is clear that in the lotteries of Shakespeare's day the lots [prizes] exceeded the blanks.’ But this deduction seems quite unwarranted. The N. E. D. also explains ‘lot’ as prize, and ‘It is lots to blanks’ as = It is a thousand to one; but in its first example the lots clearly include prizes and blanks, and in only one example is there really a distinction made between them.—[Ritson, in his malevolent zeal to show Malone at fault, has quite overshot the mark; Malone's quotation shows quite clearly that the words ‘lot’ and prize are not synonymous, and that herein Johnson is mistaken. As a further corroboration of the technical meaning of the word the following extract from the tract The Great Frost of January, 1608 may be quoted: ‘Countryman: I remember that, as I take it, in the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth, a lottery began here in London; in which, if my memory fail not, there were four hundred thousand lots to be drawn. Citizen: You say right. So much still lies in my memory. Countryman: Marry, that lottery was only for money, and every lot was ten shillings’ (ed. Arber, p. 94). Again, in the same a little farther on, the Citizen says: ‘—to every prize there are put in forty blanks. . . . There are 7,600 prizes and 42,000 blanks’ (Ibid., p. 95). This is in reference to a lottery which was held, among other shows and festivals, on the occasion of the Thames being frozen over in that year. There is, perhaps, here another slight hint of internal evidence that this play was written in either 1608 or 1609. The great popularity of this lottery would make the phrase used by Menenius readily understood by his auditors.—Ed.]
my Louer For examples of this use of ‘lover’ in the sense of one kindly disposed see Schmidt (Lex.), s. v. 1.
The booke . . . whence men haue read Steevens: So in Pericles, ‘Her face the book of praises, where is read,’ &c., [I, i, 15]. Again in Macbeth, ‘Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters,’ [I, v, 63].
I haue euer verified Warburton: Shakespeare's mighty talent in painting the manners is especially remarkable in this place. Menenius here and Polonius in Hamlet have much of the same natural character. The difference is only accidental. The one was a senator in a free state, and the other a courtier and minister to a king; which two circumstances afforded matter for that inimitable ridicule thrown over the character of Polonius. For the rest, there is an equal complaisance for those they follow; the same disposition to be a creature, the same love of prate, the same affectation of wisdom, and forwardness to be in business. But we must never believe Shakespeare could make either of them say, ‘I have verified my friends with all the size of verity’; nay, what is more extraordinary, verified them beyond verity. Without doubt he wrote, ‘For I have ever narrified my friends,’ i. e., made their encomium. This too agrees with the foregoing metaphors of book, read, and constitutes a uniformity amongst them. From whence the Oxford Editor [Hanmer] took occasion to read magnified, which makes the absurdity much worse than he found it; for to magnify signifies to exceed the truth; so that this critic makes him say he magnified his friend within the size of verity, that is, he exceeded truth even while he kept within it.—Johnson: If the commentator had given any example of the word narrify the correction would have been not only received but applauded. Now, since the new word stands without authority, we must try what sense the old one will afford. To verify is to establish by testimony. One may say with propriety he brought false witnesses to verify his title. Shakespeare considered the word with his usual laxity, as importing rather testimony than truth, and only meant to say, I bore witness to my friends with all the size that verity would suffer. I must remark that to magnify signifies to exalt or enlarge, but not necessarily to enlarge beyond the truth.—Edwards (p. 98): ‘Verified’ here is certainly wrong, as Mr Warburton in a long note has shown. To mend it he gives us a word which, if it is not his own, I doubt he can find no better authority for than the Dictionary of N. Bailey, Philolog., who has taken care to preserve all the cant words he could pick up. However, he gives the honor of it to Shakespeare, and says, ‘without doubt he wrote “I have ever narrified my friends,” i. e., made their encomium.’ I suppose Menenius read his encomiums out of a book, or at least learned them there, and then narrified by rote. But though Mr Warburton makes no doubt of Shakespeare's writing narrified, I must own I do; and if it were lawful for one, who is not a critic by profession, to make a conjecture after him, which yet I would not venture to thrust into the text without authority, I should imagine that possibly Shakespeare might have written, ‘I have ever varnished my friends . . . with all the size that verity Would without lapsing suffer.’ That is, I have laid on as much praise as would stick. It is an allusion either to painting or white-washing; and the word varnish (or vernish, as it is sometimes spelt) agrees with the following metaphor of size, at least as well as narrify does with book before. The only misfortune is that the uniformity is broken; but that is of the less consequence, because otherwise it would be knocked to pieces by the ‘bowls’ which come in the very next line. Whether this be right or no, I doubt narrifying with size will pass on nobody but a professed critic.— Heath (p. 428): If I had not learned from the Canons of Criticism that the word narrified is to be found in Bailey's Dictionary I should scarce have believed it authorized by any one writer in the English language. If it be not a cant word, as most probably it is, it conveys so ridiculous an idea that it can find no place in any other than burlesque writing. But varnishing with size [as Edwards suggests], and with all the size that verity would suffer, seems little less exceptionable than narrifying. I think Sir Thomas Hanmer's correction, magnified, bids fair for being the true reading. The word verity at the end of the next line might strike the eye of the transcriber or printer, and hang upon his imagination sufficiently to occasion the blunder. But Mr Warburton objects, that ‘to magnify signifies to exceed the truth’; and so makes an impotent effort to pass this expression on the reader for a bull. His very prayers might have taught him better. To magnify signifies to extol the greatness of anything in some respect or other, whether the praise exceed the truth, or keep within the strict bounds of it. The word size doth not here signify the composition otherwise called paste, as the author of the Canons of Criticism seems to misapprehend it, but dimension. [Heath, by thus treating with mock seriousness the jeu d'esprit of Edwards in regard to ‘varnish,’ ‘size,’ and ‘white-wash,’ places Warburton's emendation in the same ridiculous class. —Ed.]—Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 99): This unlucky word—‘verified’—has been tumbled and tossed about strangely and has chang'd its quarters for narrify'd, magnify'd, varnish'd, &c.; but, after all its peregrinations, here it is again, and here it should be. For, in the name of goodness, where is the impropriety of saying, When I have undertaken to give my friend his due praise, I have sometimes given him more than his due? Yet this is the amount of what is said by Menenius, but he says it in his manner. ‘Size’ is proportion, dimension.—Steevens: Dr Johnson's explanation of the old word verify renders all change unnecessary. To verify may, however, signify to display. Thus in an ancient metrical pedigree in the possession of the late Duchess of Northumberland, and quoted by Dr Percy in The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i, p. 279, 3d edit., ‘In hys scheld did schyne a mone veryfying her light.’ [The N. E. D. does not include to display under the various senses in which ‘verify’ is used. In the line quoted by Steevens the word may, perhaps, be interpreted as therein given under 2. d., ‘To demonstrate or prove (oneself) to be of a certain character,’ with this example, ‘Fortune . . . Turned her selfe, as shee away would flie, . . . As what she was, her selfe to verifie.’ 1596. Drayton: Leg., Dk. Normandie, cxxxiv. Under 1. c. ‘To support or back up by testimony,’ the present line is quoted as the only example.—Ed.]—Malone: The meaning (to give a somewhat more expanded comment) is: ‘I have ever spoken the truth of my friends, and in speaking of them have gone as far as I could go consistently with truth. I have not only told the truth, but the whole truth, and with the most favourable colouring that I could give to their actions without transgressing the bounds of truth.’—Collier regards as indisputable the reading of his MS. Corrector, magnified, but fails to call attention to the fact that this is the reading of Hanmer's text.—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, p. 225) is equally at fault in commenting upon this reading, and says in conclusion: ‘If any change is necessary, which seems doubtful, notified could hardly be distinguished, when written or printed as of old, from uerified. Magnified has little similarity with it.’—Dyce (ed. i.): Here ‘verified’ is a most suspicious reading, and perhaps crept into the text in consequence of the transcriber's or compositor's eye having rested on the word ‘verity’ in the next line.—Staunton: Perhaps the true word is rarefied, that is, stretched out. See Love's Labour's, IV, ii, 125, where, for ‘Here are numbers ratified’ we should also probably read rarefied. [Had Staunton no judicious friend who should have pointed out to him the somewhat ludicrous idea of Menenius making a boast of his constant occupation of stretching out his friends? The only possible meaning of rarify is to make rare or less dense. As to the word ‘ratify’ in Love's Labour's, Staunton is the sole editor or commentator who has suspected its validity.—Ed.]—R. G. White: The senseless reading of the folio seems to be the result either of looking to ‘verity’ at the end of the next line to assist in deciphering obscure manuscript, or of an anticipative remembrance of that word by a compositor who undertook to set the whole clause from a single reading. ‘Amplified’ in the previous clause, and ‘all the size’ in this, seems to me to fully justify the change of ‘verified’ to magnified which was made in Hanmer's edition and in Collier's folio.—Leo (Coriolanus): This seems almost to be nonsense. What I propose is not much better than magnified, except that the expression is somewhat more distinct, and the word contains one letter more, corresponding with the letters in ‘verified’; I propose to read glorified.—Hudson (ed. i.): Some corruption of the text has long been suspected, and various changes proposed, but none so good as magnified, which falls in perfectly with the meaning and position of amplified and size.—Keightley (Expositor, p. 373): As ‘verified’ would seem to have been suggested by the following ‘verity,’ we might read, with Hanmer, magnified, or perhaps repeat ‘amplified.’ [See Text. Notes.]—Whitelaw: That is, I have always told the truth about my friends' good acts—always the whole truth—sometimes perhaps a little more than the truth. [This, it will be noticed, is little more than an abstract of Malone's interpretation, and to this Schmidt takes exception, saying that here ‘verify’ means rather, ‘I have always maintained the credit of my friends,’ which is the meaning he also attaches to this word in his Lexicon.—Ed.]—W. A. Wright: [Johnson's, Malone's, and Schmidt's] are all forced explanations of a word which is most likely corrupt, and they none of them fit in with ‘size’ in the next line. Perhaps ‘amplified’ might be repeated from the preceding line.—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): That is, spoken up for, borne witness to. Numerous emendations have been suggested. Most of these assume that a word implying exaggeration is wanted, but that does not come until ll. 23-26.—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): Can this be a coinage of Menenius like ‘conspectuities,’ fidius'd, as if it were very-fy in the sense of magnify, with a play on ‘verity’ below? This clearly is the meaning intended. [Beeching did not repeat this in his Falcon Ed. a year later, but accepted Johnson's explanation of this phrase. —Ed.]—Verity (Student's Sh.): The Century Dictionary gives as one of the significations of ‘verify,’ ‘to second or strengthen by aid; to back; to support the credit of,’ being an extension of the common meaning ‘to confirm the truthfulness or authenticity of.’ Compare King John, II, i, 277, ‘To verify their title with their lives,’ i. e., to confirm, support. In speaking of his friends Menenius has always backed them up to the very limits of veracity. The word cannot, I think, be taken exactly in the sense ‘been true, loyal to,’ though some so interpret it.— Perring (p. 314): The occurrence of ‘verity’ in the succeeding line seems to me to indicate that ‘verify’ was the verb used. From the same circumstance others may draw an inference the very reverse. But this I would say, we must not expect, as a matter of course, to find in Shakespeare duplicates of what I may call Shakespearian curiosities. Many of his strange and strangely used words occur but once, proving how careful he was not to adulterate with too liberal an admixture of alloy the pure gold of the English tongue.—Case (Arden Sh.): Different meanings have been extracted out of ‘verified,’ but Johnson has probably given as good an unforced sense as can be obtained. . . . Possibly Shakespeare in this line thinks of Coriolanus's fame as it exists outside the record which men have read in ‘the book’ Menenius, and of Menenius as authenticating that fame by his testimony. Mr Craig was very doubtful of the word, and seems at one time to have thought of substituting amplified in the text.—Tucker Brooke (Yale Sh.): The Folio reading gives a reasonable sense, I have shown my friends to be my friends.
a subtle ground Steevens: ‘Subtle’ means smooth, level. So Jonson, in one of his Masques, ‘Tityus's breast, that (for six of the nine acres) is counted the subtlest bowling-ground in all Tartary,’ [Chloridia, ed. Gifford, viii, 105. This quotation as given by Steevens contained one or two verbal inaccuracies; they are here corrected.—Ed.] ‘Subtle,’ however, may mean artificially unlevel, as many bowlinggreens are.—Malone: May it not have its more ordinary acceptation, deceitful.— W. A. Wright: A ground that is so smooth and deceitful that the bowl moves over it more rapidly than the bowler intends and goes beyond the mark. There is another reference to the game of bowls in III, i, 78.—C. T. Onions (N. E. D., s. v. 10.c.): Of ground: Tricky. [The present line, and that from Chloridia above, quoted as only examples.]
stampt the Leasing Henley: That is, given the sanction of truth to my very exaggerations. This appears to be the sense of the passage from what is said afterwards by the 2 Guard, ‘Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you have.’ ‘Leasing’ occurs in our translation of the Bible. See Psalm iv, 2, [‘how long will yee love vanity, and seeke after leasing?’].—Malone: I have almost given the lie such a sanction as to render it current.—W. A. Wright: ‘Leasing’ is the Anglo-Saxon leásung, falsehood. Compare Twelfth Night, I, v, 105, ‘Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speakest well of fools!’ And Psalm v, 6, ‘Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing.’
pusht out your gates Abbott (§ 183): Out (out from) is used as a preposition like forth.
easie groanes Steevens: That is, slight, inconsiderable. So in 2 Henry VI: ‘—these faults are easy, quickly answer'd,’ [III, i, 133].—Schmidt (Lex., s. v. 3.): Requiring no great labour or exertion, soon done. ‘With very easy arguments of love,’ King John, I, i, 36. the Virginall Palms Warburton: By ‘virginal palms’ may be indeed understood the holding up the hands in supplication. Therefore I have altered nothing. But as this sense is cold and gives us even a ridiculous idea; and as the passions of the several intercessors seem intended to be represented, I suspect Shakespeare might write pasmes or pames, that is, swooning fits, from the French pasmer or pâmer. I have frequently used the liberty to give sense to an unmeaning passage by the introduction of a French word of the same sound, which I suppose to be of Shakespeare's own coining. And I am certainly justified in so doing by the great number of such sort of words to be found in the common text.—Johnson: It is not denied that many French words were mingled in the time of Elizabeth with our language, which have since been ejected, and that many which are known then to have been in use may be properly recalled when they will help the sense. But when a word is to be admitted, the first question should be, by whom was it ever received? in what book can it be shewn? If it cannot be proved to have been in use, the reasons which can justify its reception must be stronger than any critic will have to bring.—Edwards (p. 99): Mr Warburton must sure have a very hard heart if the idea of virgins holding up their hands in supplication for their lives and honor can seem to him either cold or ridiculous, and nothing will satisfy him but making them swoon that he may have an opportunity of bringing in a French word.—Heath (p. 429): The author of the Canons of Criticism hath very justly exposed Mr Warburton's most ridiculous emendation, . . . though the word [pasms or pâmes] as a noun is as unknown to the French as it is to the English language, and probably to every language that is human. I do indeed admit that ‘a great number of French words are incorporated in our language, and used by Shakespeare in common with other writers’; but that there are a great number of such words to be met with in his writings which are of his own coining, and peculiar to himself, is a circumstance which, I must confess, hath escaped my observation. But granting the fact to be true; is that a sufficient justification for over-loading him with such words by wholesale for mere fanciful conjecture only, in defiance of the authority of all his editions, and that too when their text expresses his meaning in English full as well, and frequently much better, and with more force and elegance? To detect the weakness and insufficiency of Mr Warburton's defence we need but apply the reasoning on which it is founded to a similar instance. Whoever hath but dipped into Shakespeare must have observed a certain obscurity, which may be considered as one of the characteristic peculiarities of his style, arising in great measure from the grandeur, the strength, and the exactness of his conceptions, which he could not equal by the force of his expression, though his powers even of this kind were never excelled by any other writer. It is the business of a critic to illustrate these obscurities, but he would be justly laughed at and exploded if he should set about multiplying their number under the pretext that he was strictly adhering to Shakespeare's manner.—Steevens: The adjective ‘virginal’ is used in Woman is a Weathercock, 1612, ‘Lav'd in a bath of contrite virginal tears,’ [III, ii, Hazlett-Dods., p. 53]. Again in Spenser, Faerie Queene, ‘She to them made with mildnesse virginall,’ Bk ii, cant. ix, [v. 20, l. 4].—Malone: So in 2 Henry VI: ‘—tears virginal Shalt be to me even as the dew to fire,’ [V, ii, 52].—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, p. 226): It is possible that for ‘virginal palms’ we should read ‘virginal qualms’; the words would be easily mistaken for each other in old manuscript. ‘Virginal palms’ may, however, mean the palms or hands of the maidens joined in supplication.—R. G. White (Sh's Scholar, p. 366): Indeed, Mr Singer! may it? Is it possible? Can such an obvious and simple construction of a plain but beautiful passage be dreamt of in your philosophy? I must ask pardon for noticing such attempts on Shakespeare's text, and for noticing them as I do; for, in truth, I should as soon expect an intelligent reader, not to say a competent editor of Shakespeare, ‘to expostulate . . . Why day is day, night, night, and time is time,’ as thus to raise a question on what it would seem impossible to misunderstand.
halfe pinte of blood. Backe . . . hauing Warburton: As these words are read and pointed, the sentence ‘that's the utmost of your having’ signifies, you are like to get no further. Whereas the author evidently intended it to refer to ‘the half pint of blood’ he speaks of, and to mean that that was all he had in his veins. The thought is humorous, and to disembarrass it from the corrupt expression we should read and point thus, ‘Lest I let forth your half pint of blood; that's the utmost of your having. Back, back.’—Johnson: I believe the meaning never was mistaken, and therefore do not change the reading.— Heath (p. 432): Mr Warburton has taken upon him to alter the text in order, as he says, to preserve the humour. But the common reading gives exactly the same sense, is fully as intelligible, and by interposing the word ‘back’ in the middle of the sentence gives more humour and spirit to the expression. Let the reader judge. ‘Back, I say, go; lest I let forth your half pint of blood—back—that's the utmost of your having.—Back.’
Companion See IV, v, 15 and note. Ile say an arrant for you Whitelaw: You shall hear how I can say what I was sent to say.—Schmidt (Coriolanus): Certainly not as Whitelaw interprets, but rather, I will perform a commission for you, your general shall now learn all.—W. A. Wright: I'll tell him a story about you. [Of these, Schmidt's is, I think, the best. Menenius means that he will take upon himself the office of messenger which properly belongs to the Guard.—Ed.]
Iacke gardant Steevens: This term is equivalent to one still in use— Jack in office, i. e., one who is as proud of his petty consequence as an exciseman.
guesse but my Johnson proposes, but does not adopt in his text, the reading ‘guess by my,’ wherein he is anticipated by Hanmer.—Steevens remarks that this reading is also suggested by Edwards in his MS. notes.—Malone duly credits it to Hanmer, and in regard to this change of ‘but’ to by adds: ‘It is much more probable that by should have been omitted at the press than confounded with but.’ See Text. Notes.—Ed.
looke thee Abbott (§ 212): Verbs followed by thee instead of thou have been called reflexive. But though ‘haste thee’ and some other phrases with verbs of motion, may be thus explained, and verbs were thus often used in Early English, it is probable that ‘look thee,’ ‘hark thee’ are to be explained by euphonic reasons. Thee thus used follows imperatives which, being themselves emphatic, require an unemphatic pronoun. The Elizabethans reduced thou to thee. We have gone further, and rejected it altogether.
your Gates Ritson (Remarks, p. 142): ‘Your’ cannot be right. If the speaker mean to call the gates Coriolanus's, which would seem very absurd, he ought to say thy. It must be either our or their.—Leo (reading with F4): Menenius cannot call the gates ‘your,’ since Coriolanus afterwards says ‘your,’ l. 90. Perhaps we ought to read yond.—Schmidt retains the folio reading, taking it as an example of the ethical dative, which is, I think, hardly defensible; his second reason is the better: ‘Perhaps Menenius wishes to bring more nearly home to Coriolanus that it is his own (Coriolanus's) native city from which he comes.’— Case gives substantially this same reason for retaining the reading ‘your gates.’— Ed.—Walker (Crit., ii, ch. xlvi.) gives many examples of the confusion between your and our not only in the pages of the Folio, but in works by other writers and printers.
This, who . . . to thee Beeching (Falcon Sh.): A burst of humour which was meant to be irresistible. But the wrangling with the sentinels has upset Menenius, and he is not equal to himself.
Seruanted Abbott (§ 294): A participle formed from an adjective means ‘made (the adjective’), and derived from a noun means ‘endowed (with the noun’). [Abbott explains ‘servanted’ here as made subservient, and thus takes servant as the adjectival form of the word, as ‘stranger’ is used in Lear, I, i, 207, ‘stranger'd with our curse,’ i. e., made a stranger by our curse.—Numerous other examples of this construction are given.—Ed.] Though I owe My Reuenge properly, etc. Johnson: Though I have a peculiar right in revenge, in the power of forgiveness the Volcians are conjoined. [For this use of ‘remission’ in the sense of pardon compare, ‘My penance is to call Lucetta back And ask remission for my folly past,’ Two Gentlemen, I, i, 65.]
Ingrate forgetfulnesse shall poison . . . Then pitty: Note how much Theobald: We cannot desire a more signal instance of the indolent stupidity of our editors. Forgetfulness might poison in not remembering a conversation of Friendship, but how could it, in such an action, be said to pity too? The pointing is absurd, and the sentiment consequently sunk into nonsense. As I have regulated the stops both Dr Thirlby and Mr Warburton saw with me they ought to be regulated. I have still ventured beyond my ingenious friends in changing ‘poison’ into prison, which adds an antithesis by which the sense seems clearer and more natural, viz., That forgetfulness will rather keep it a secret that we have been familiar, than pity shall disclose how much we have been so.—Heath (p. 432): Mr Theobald, by a very ingenious and, in my opinion, a very probable conjecture, would substitute prison for ‘poison,’ but Mr Warburton would not hearken to him.—Dyce: It is at least certain that elsewhere the Folio has by mistake ‘poysons’ for prisons, [Love's Labour's, IV, iii, 305], and ‘poyson'd’ for prison'd, [I Henry VI: V, iv, 121], but there is something forced in Theobald's reading here.— R. G. White: Although the old text may be accepted as meaning, Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison the memory of our old friendship, it must yet be admitted that this accords ill with the alternative clause of the sentence, ‘rather than pity note how much,’ and it is not improbable that poison is a corruption. [White characterises Theobald's reading as ‘not very happy.’—Ed.]—Leo (Coriolanus): ‘Ingrate forgetfulness’ is here subject; rather than pity shall note the fact how familiar they have been, the ingrate forgetfulness of the Roman people shall poison this thought.—Case (Arden Sh.): It is Coriolanus who admits no appeal to old friendship, and therefore it is his forgetfulness that will ungratefully poison the remembrance rather than his pity will recall how great that familiarity was. Hence the idea of some that ‘ingrate forgetfulness’ may refer to the conduct of the countrymen of Coriolanus, the ‘dastard nobles,’ seems improbable. poison W. A. Wright: That is, destroy, stifle. So in Love's Labour's, IV, iii, 305, ‘Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries.’ [This, it will be noticed, is the passage cited by Dyce above in support of Theobald's change, prisons, in the present line. To Theobald is also due the change in the line in Love's Labours. For a discussion as to this change see the latter play, this ed., p. 194.—Ed.]
for I loued thee Because I loved thee. Compare III, i, 14; and for other examples see, if needful, Abbott, § 151.
shent W. A. Wright: Scolded, reproved. See Twelfth Night, IV, ii, 112, ‘I am shent for speaking to you.’ The original meaning of the word is ‘to disgrace, put to shame,’ from the Anglo-Saxon scendan. In the earlier Wicliffite translation of 1 Sam., xx, 34, instead of what in the Authorised Version is ‘be cause his father had done him shame,’ we find ‘forthi that his fader hadde shent hym.’
by himselfe Malone: That is, by his own hands.
bee that you are, long W. A. Wright: Menenius plays upon the two meanings of the word—tedious in talk, long-tongued, and long-lived.