This text is part of:
I cannot call you Licurgusses C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): This fleer of the old patrician has doubly humorous force of allusion; since it not only refers to the renowned Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, who was a man that banished luxury and possessed large wisdom with utmost severity of morals, but it also includes reference to a King of Thrace, named Lycurgus, who abolished the worship of Bacchus from his dominions, and ordered all the vines therein to be cut down, in order to preserve himself and subjects from the temptations and consequences of a too free use of wine.—Orger (p. 61): This passage has been left without alteration by the editors, when the suppression of the parenthesis is, I think, evidently demanded by the sense. Menenius is piquing himself on his frankness, and declares that he cannot call such politicians as these Lycurgusses on any occasion when he falls in with them. I think it clear we should read, ‘Meeting two such wealsmen as you are I cannot call you Lycurgusses. If the drink,’ etc.
William Shakespeare. Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D. The Tragedie of Coriolanus. Philadelphia and London. J. B. Lippincott Company.
NSF, NEH: Digital Libraries Initiative, Phase 2 provided support for entering this text.
