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censured W. A. Wright: That is, what opinion is formed of you, how you are estimated. See I, i, 294, and compare Much Ado, II, iii, 233, ‘I hear how I am censured.’ And Jul. Cæs., III, ii, 16, ‘Censure me in your wisdom.’ right hand File Schmidt (Coriolanus): That is, men of rank who are the right hand of the state. The parliamentary sense of right and left is here quite untenable.—Gordon: That is, by us of the conservative ranks. The ‘lefthand file,’ by the same token, would be radical opposition represented by the Tribunes. [On this point Schmidt is undoubtedly correct; the use of Right and Left in the parliamentary sense is too modern for application here.—Fortescue (Shakespeare's England, vol. i, ch. iv, The Army, p. 114) says: ‘A file in these days consists of two men. In the sixteenth century it numbered at least ten. . . . Again, the place of honour to military men has always been the right of the line, and accordingly a captain always drew up his best and choicest men in the right-hand files of his company.’ Fortescue quotes this present line in illustration.—Ed.]
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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