[Scene III.]
Once Warburton: ‘Once’ here means the same as when we say once for all.—Farmer: This use of the word ‘once’ is found in The Supposes, by Gascoigne, ‘Once, twentyfour ducattes he cost me,’ [Act V, sc. v, p. 236, ed. Cunliffe.—Ed.].— Steevens: Again in Com. of Errors, ‘Once this, your long experience of her wisdom,’ [III, i, 89].—Malone: I doubt whether ‘once’ here signifies once for all; I believe it means ‘if he do but so much as require our voices,’ as in the following passage in Holinshed's Chronicle: ‘—they left many of their servants, and men of war behind them, and some of them would not once stay for their standards.’ [This note appears first in Malone's own edition; it is not repeated in the Variorum of 1821.—Ed.]—Abbott (§ 57) besides the present line gives three other examples wherein ‘once’ is used in the sense once for all. Under the sense in a word Abbott quotes the line from Comedy of Errors given by Steevens. Pope's unfortunate emendation Oons! for ‘Once’ drew forth from Theobald the following note, which he omitted, however, in his ed. ii, ‘What, more anachronisms, and more than ever the Poet design'd or slipt into! But this, like the boiled Pig and Colliflower in the Farce, is of Squire Somebody's own bespeaking, and 'twill be but kind to let him have the dish to himself. Mr Pope, I presume, hardly thinks that Blood and Wounds ever came into an oath till after the Crucifixion of our Saviour. But, to set that question apart, our citizens here are no such blustering blades. They say honestly, in all other editions, no more than this: “Once, if he do require our voices,” &c., i. e., In a word, once for all, I've said it once and I'll stand to it.’ [See Appendix: Shakespeare and the Masses, R. W. Chambers, p. 712.]
We haue power . . . to do Warburton: I am persuaded this was intended as a ridicule on the Augustine manner of defining free will at that time in the schools.—Johnson: A ridicule may be intended, but the sense is clear enough. Power first signifies natural power or force, and then moral power or right. Davies has used the word with great variety of meaning: ‘Use all thy powers, that heavenly power to praise, That gave thee power to do.’—[Johnson was evidently trusting to his memory; this quotation is from Sir John Davies' Nosce Teipsum, the concluding lines, and in Arber's reprint (English Garner, vol. v, p. 202) runs thus: ‘Use all thy powers that Blessed Power to praise! Which gives thee power to Be, and Use the same.’—Ed.]—Heath (p. 416): I am as well persuaded, as Mr Warburton can be of the contrary, that ‘this was not intended as a ridicule on the Augustine’ (it should be the Augustinian) ‘manner of defining free-will at that time in the schools.’ The present expression, indeed, is no other than the natural dictate of an honest heart, which Shakespeare felt in its full force. The sense is, We have indeed a power by law to do it if we think proper, but this power amounts to the same as no power at all, because we should offer the greatest violence to our very natures if we should exert it. Thus much I thought it right to say in justification of this sentiment, which considered as Shakespeare intended it, as a moral sentiment, is a very fine one, and a very serious one; not a ludicrous one, as Mr Warburton, wrapped up in his verbal metaphysics, would represent it. But to consider it in the metaphysical light in which he hath chosen to place it, I would beg leave to ask him one question. Doth he know what was the Augustinian definition of free will, which in Shakespeare's time, or at any time before, or since, obtained in the schools? I am persuaded he doth not, or he could never have thought the ridicule, he hath gone out of his way to fasten upon it, would suit it. But I believe the truth of the case is this, Mr Warburton had formerly read the Provincial Letters, in the first of which the pouvoir prochain of the Dominican Thomists . . . is very finely and very strongly ridiculed, and that in a manner which bears a distant resemblance to the text of our poet. This probably might give the hint to his confused imagination to transfer a misunderstood ridicule upon a doctrine to which it is no way applicable. For let me ask him another question. Had he himself the power while he was writing this note to throw up the sash of his study window and leap out of it? I suppose he will scarce deny that he had the power to do so; but that power being under the control of another power, which belonged to him as a moral agent, I suppose too he will as little deny, that, upon the result of the combination of those two powers, he had not, as then circumstanced, the power to exert the physical power. If he should deny it, the common sense of mankind will bear witness against him. This is the very case in our poet's text. The man had in himself the power to do it, but it was a power he had no power to exert. But thus it will always be with people who affect to know everything. They are at every turn betraying their ignorance of the very rudiments of what they will be talking about.
we are to . . . speake for them W. A. Wright: Not like Antony, who says (Jul. Cæs., III, ii, 229): ‘I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths
And bid them speak for me.’
—Gordon: As Antony did for Cæsar, though he feigned the contrary: ‘Were I a Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Cæsar,’ III, ii, 230-233.
of the which For other examples of this construction see, if needful, Abbott § 270.—P. Simpson (Sh. Punctuation, p. 52) gives several other passages wherein the relative is thus followed by a comma.
for once Malone: That is, as soon as ever we stood up. This word is still used in nearly the same sense in familiar or rather vulgar language such as Shakespeare wished to allot to the Roman populace: ‘Once the will of the monarch is the only law, the constitution is destroyed.’—Steevens: As no decisive evidence is brought to prove that the adverb ‘once’ has at any time signified as soon as ever, I have not rejected the word introduced by Mr Rowe, which, in my judgment, is necessary to the speaker's meaning.—Schmidt (Coriolanus): We need not concern ourselves with the peculiar meaning of a word if we understand ‘for’ in the sense of because, as it not infrequently occurs.—W. A. Wright: This does not seem a natural construction.—[Abbott (§ 244) includes this passage among the examples of those wherein the relative is omitted; the word when in this present case.—Ed.]—Case (Arden Sh.): Shakespeare here obviously refers to the place in North's Plutarch where it is related that Coriolanus, after he was refused the consulship, and when great store of corn was brought to Rome, made an oration against the insolency of the people and the proposal to distribute corn gratis. Shakespeare makes this opposition of Coriolanus to the distribution of corn precede his going up for the consulship.
the many-headed Multitude Whitelaw: The ροικίλον καὶ ρολυκέφαλον θηπίον of Plato (Republic, ix, par. 588) represents, in men or states, the multifarious appetites of human nature, turbulent and strong: of the three principles— rational, ambitious appetitive—the last and lowest in the scale. So Horace to the Roman public: ‘Bellua multorum es capitum. Nam quid sequar aut quem?’ [Epistola, i, l. 76. See Bayley, pp. 159-164, for a remarkable culling of examples of phrases applied to the people from the authors and playwrights of the period.—Ed.]
Abram Murray (N. E. D., s. v. Abraham, Abram): Corruption of Auburn, formerly often written abern, aborn; [the present line quoted; also, 1599, Solim. & Pers. (Haz. Dods., v, 363): ‘Where is the eldest son of Priam, That Abrahamcolour'd Trojan? Dead.’ 1627 Peacham. Compleat Gentleman, 155 (1661). ‘I shall passe to the exposition of certain colours—Abram-colour, i. e., brown, Auborne or Abborne, i. e., brown or brown-black.’—Steevens, in reference to the spelling of the Folio, makes this cryptic remark: ‘I should unwillingly suppose this to be the true reading; but we have already heard of Cain and Abram-coloured beards.’— Wright, in illustration of the spelling abron, quotes Hall's Satires, iii, 5, 8, ‘A lusty courtier whose curled head With abron locks was fairly furnished.’
if all our wittes . . . out of one Scull Warburton: Meaning though our having but one interest was most apparent, yet our wishes and projects would be infinitely discordant.—M. Mason (Comments, p. 250): To suppose all their wits to issue from one skull, and that their common consent and agreement to go all one way, should end in their flying to every point of the compass, is a just description of the variety and inconsistency of the opinions, wishes, and actions of the multitude.
their consent . . . direct way W. A. Wright: That is, their agreement to go in one direction.
the fourth . . . to get thee a Wife Warburton: A sly satirical insinuation how small a capacity of wit is necessary for that purpose. But every day's experience of the Sex's prudent disposal of themselves may be sufficient to inform us how unjust it is.—Schmidt (Coriolanus): What jocosity has the speaker in mind? Does he wish to imply that in order to win and wed a wife requires the least part of one's mother-wit; or that one must be reduced to a fourth part of his wit in order to think of marriage?
you may, you may Steevens: This colloquial phrase, which seems to signify ‘you may divert yourself as you please at my expence,’ has occurred already in Tro. & Cress.: ‘Hel. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead. Pand. Ay, you may, you may,’ [III, i, 118].
carries it, I say. Schmidt (Coriolanus): Modern editors place the period after ‘it,’ beginning the next sentence with ‘I say.’ But, not to mention that a comic twist is thereby lost, it may perhaps be worth noting that Shakespeare never begins a sentence with this emphatic ‘I say.’ [‘Never’ and ‘always’ are somewhat perilous words to use in reference to Shakespearian usage. Here, then, are three examples taken at random which are contradictory, I think, to Schmidt's assertion: ‘I say it is the moon that shines so bright,’ Tam. of Shr., IV, v, 4; ‘I say she's dead; I'll swear't,’ Wint. Tale, III, ii, 104; ‘I say the earth did shake when I was born,’ 1 Henry IV: III, i, 21.—Ed.]—W. A. Wright, in reference to the Folio pointing, says: ‘But the Third Citizen is somewhat of a wit, and a truism of this kind has no comic effect in his mouth.’
by particulars W. A. Wright: That is, one by one, in detail.—Case (Arden Sh.): The phrase is ambiguous and might mean ‘in detail, point by point,’ but Coriolanus has only one request to make, and it is reasonable to distribute it by repetition as the context distributes the answers.
thinke vpon you Beeching (Falcon Sh.): To ‘think upon,’ in the mouth of a suppliant, has the special sense of ‘to remember with compassion,’ as in Jonah, i, 6, ‘If so be God will think upon us’; so that there is a touch of epigram in Coriolanus's retort, ‘I would they would forget me.’
like the Vertues . . . lose by em Theobald: I wish they would forget me as they do those virtuous precepts which the divines preach up to them, and lose by them, as it were, by their neglecting the practice.—Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 88): ‘Virtues’ are put poetically for precepts of virtue, which divines are properly enough said to lose by hearers upon whom they have no influence.— Badham (Criticism, p. 13): Anyone who can seriously maintain that there is a meaning in this passage as it now stands has much false ingenuity to unlearn. The following passage in North's Plutarch (Life of Romulus, p. 26, ed. 1579) may perhaps afford us some clue: ‘Moreover other birdes are allwayes (as a man would saye) before our eyes, and doe daylie shewe themselves unto us: where the vulter is a very rare byrde and hardly to be seene, and men do not easily finde their ayeries. Which hath geven some occasion to holde a false opinion that the vulters are passagers, &c. The prognosticators also thincke that such things which are not ordinarie and but rarely seene, be not natural, but miraculously sent by the gods to prognosticate something.’ Now we have no doubt that Coriolanus here wishes that his dealings with the people were as transitory and rare as the visits of vultures are to the gaze of the soothsayers. He never wishes to encounter them more, not even to hear their praises. But then how is this passage to be moulded according to this view? Shall we read, ‘I wish they would forget me like the vultures Which our diviners lease by’; or, Which our divines lose sight of? Let the judicious determine or, rather, let them propose some more satisfactory way of introducing this word thus strangely corrupted into virtues. [It is, I think, doubtful that Badham's extravagant emendation or explanation will appeal to any thoughtful reader. He himself would very likely have somewhat modified his view had he consulted the several passages wherein Shakespeare refers to the Vulture. In no instance is this bird taken except as the emblem of voracity, which honor it seems to share with the cormorant. The words ‘virtues’ and vultures in the handwriting of the time do not in the least resemble each other.—Ed.]—Verplanck: ‘I wish they would forget me, as they do the moral teachings of our divines.’ This (repeat a dozen critics) is ‘an amusing instance of anachronism.’ I do not see why the priestly teachers of morals in a heathen land may not well be termed ‘divines’ by an English poet without implying that he supposed them to be doctors of divinity of Oxford or Geneva. [As far as I know Verplanck himself is the first to call attention to the anachronism—his edition appeared in 1847—the ‘dozen critics’ are all named John Doe.—Ed.]—Hudson: This use of the term ‘divines’ has been set down as another anachronism. No doubt it is so. And so in North's Plutarch we often find that the ancient Greeks and Romans had bishops among them. The poet simply uses the language of his time to represent what has been done at all times.—Wellesley (p. 26): None of the commentators have informed us what were the precepts by which Coriolanus imagines that the Roman divines of his day are as much losers as he is by his example. I should rather suppose that he borrowed his simile from the Faculty, and that we should read, ‘Which medicines lose by time,’ the compositor having read our divines for medicines and them for time. —Jabez [C. M. Ingleby] (Notes & Queries, 11 Aug., 1877, p. 105): Undoubtedly time may have been read ‘them,’ which, in its turn, was contracted into ‘em.’ But if ‘our divines’ be a corruption, its place can hardly have been occupied by medicines; for men do not cease to care for the lost virtues of their drugs, but throw physic to the dogs when it is found to have survived its efficacy. On the contrary, men do not throw away their old wines, not even their tawny port, but they set store by them, prizing them for the very reason that their former virtues, have departed. I therefore propose to read, ‘Like the virtues Which old wines lose by time,’ conceiving that our d is a misprint for old, ivines for wines. Coriolanus might fitly compare himself (as valued by the plebs) to the virtues of a wine, which men think they do well to dispraise and forget. [In Cam. ii. another emendation is accredited to Ingleby, ‘Which dry wines lose by time’; it is, however, marked as withdrawn. May we not add, wisely?—Ed.]—R. M. Spence (Notes & Queries, 1 Sep., 1877, p. 163): In a reverent and diffident spirit I venture to suggest that Shakespeare's words may possibly have been, ‘I would they would forget me, like the victims Which our diviners toss by 'em.’ I. e., as haruspices, having examined the exta, toss the carcases of the victims aside, as having served their purpose, so wish I that the profanum vulgus of Rome, having got what they wanted from me—victory over their foes and security for themselves—may ever forget me. Since this note was written I have seen Jabez's proposed emendation of this passage. With all deference, I submit that my rendering, while taking no greater liberty with the text than his, is more in keeping with Coriolanus's impetuous manner. [The deferential tone of Spence's note somewhat precludes severe criticism, still it may be pointed out that ‘victim’ is a word which does not occur in any of Shakespeare's works; and, according to the N. E. D., was not in current use until towards the end of 1600. Of what use are Concordances of the plays and poems if not for the purpose of establishing such a fact as the first of these here given?—Ed.]—W. Carew (Ibid., p. 163): I would suggest the passage is elliptical, and should read, ‘Like the virtues which our divines forget when they lose by enforcing or practising them.’—W. A. Wright: That is, waste upon them by preaching to them in vain. If this be the true reading, Theobald's explanation must be right. [Wright characterises the various emendations proposed as ‘all more open to objection than the original text.’]—Case (Arden Sh.): Elliptical in the extreme. Divines lose their labour, not their virtues, but they may be regarded as losing the plants of virtue which they vainly strive to set and cultivate in base minds.
wholsome Steevens: So in Hamlet, ‘If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer,’ [III, ii, 328].—W. A. Wright: That is, in a suitable, reasonable manner, and not in this wild way.
Enter three of the Citizens There is, it will be noticed, a discrepancy between the number of Citizens here given and the words of Coriolanus, l. 68. The Text. Notes show the various attempts to reconcile the two; on the whole, the arrangements adopted by the Cambridge Edd., for this and l. 68, seem to be the best solution of the difficulty.—Ed.—Schmidt: On account of the expression ‘a brace’ editors have altered the ‘three’ of this stage-direction to ‘two,’ but it may be remarked that ‘brace,’ like the German ein Paar, is frequently used for a small number; and even were it not so, the three Citizens could enter one after the other, and at first only two be seen by Coriolanus.—Beeching (Falcon Sh.): The Cambridge Edd. make a third citizen enter alone. This is possible, as the citizens had agreed to come ‘by ones, by twos, and by threes’ (l. 45). In that case he must step ahead of the ‘brace,’ as he is first to reply (Folio). On the other hand, in l. 85, Coriolanus says, ‘There's in all two voices begg'd’; which the Cambridge Edd. do not alter!
Bid them wash their Faces W. S. Walker (Crit., iii, 210): Playing upon Menenius's ‘wholesome manner.’
a brace Murray (N. E. D., s. v. III, 15. D.) gives several examples wherein ‘brace,’ meaning couple, applied to persons is used in a slightly humorous or contemptuous sense, its usual application being to designate a pair of dogs, from the strap or brace which holds them together. The word thus used by Coriolanus on this occasion is quite in character.—Ed. 69. You know the cause (Sir）] Dyce: Rowe's alteration (sirs) is perhaps right, for Coriolanus may now be speaking to the ‘brace,’ though he presently asks them for their voices one by one. In the more recent editions (Mr Knight's excepted) the dialogue between Coriolanus and these two Citizens is arranged in a sort of verse, but the Folio gives it as prose; nor does it seem to have been intended by the author for verse any more than the dialogue between Coriolanus and the ‘two other Citizens,’ of which no editor has attempted to make verse.
3 Cit. E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): The Citizen insists on all the formalities being gone through. One feels that this particular citizen must be quite especially offensive in Coriolanus's eyes.
I, but mine owne desire. Steevens: If ‘but’ be the true reading, it must signify, as in the North, without.—Ritson: ‘But’ is only the reading of the First Folio. Not is the true reading.—Malone: The answer of the Citizen fully supports the correction which was made by the editor of the third folio. ‘But’ and not are often confounded in these plays.—Schmidt, retaining the Folio reading, places a dash after ‘desire’ instead of a period, as though the speech were interrupted; and in justification says: ‘The following “How” as an exclamation of amazement, instead of what is thoroughly Shakespearean, and does not contradict the very simple alteration of the text.’—‘But in this case,’ remarks W. A. Wright, the interruption would not be “How! not your own desire!” which clearly must repeat his words.’ As other instances of the confusion between ‘but’ and not Wright cites III, iii, 155 supra, and As You Like It, II, i, 5, ‘Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,’ where the Folios have ‘not.’—Ed.
A match Sir Staunton: The meaning we take to be this: Coriolanus having won the voice of one Citizen, turns to the other with the enquiry, Will you match it? and then proceeds: ‘There's in all two worthy voices begged,’ &c.
But . . . odde Steevens: As this hemistich is too bulky to join with its predecessor, we may suppose our author to have written only, ‘This is something odd’; and that the compositor's eye had caught ‘But’ from the succeeding line.—[Shakespeare is in nowise responsible for this halting verse into which his prose has been ruthlessly measured out; any errors in the prosody must be ascribed to Capell, as Steevens doubtless knew.—Ed.]
And 'twere . . . no matter C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): The naturalness of the writing here, with this break in the speech, and with the half expressed but most expressive sentences of puzzled annoyance and grudged consent, is inimitable. There is no one like Shakespeare for conveying perfect impression through imperfect expression.—Verity (Student's Sh.): Another foreshadowing. The two remarks convey a fine idea of blank surprise and disgust.
You haue . . . Common people Verity (Student's Sh.): This represents the sole effort of the Citizens to put in practice the ‘lessoning’ of the Tribunes. And it is more than enough to stir the resentment of Coriolanus.—MacCallum (p. 527): It is all very well for the candidate to turn this off with a flout, but it is the sober truth. That the despised plebeian should see both sides of the case shows in him more sanity of judgment than Coriolanus ever possessed; that he should nevertheless cast his vote for such an applicant shows more generosity as well. And the generosity, if also the simplicity, of the electors is likewise made more pronounced than in Plutarch by their persevering in their course despite the scorn with which Coriolanus treats them; of which Plutarch, of course, knows nothing. Even that they forgive till the tribunes irritate the wounds and predict more fatal ones from the new weapon that has been put into such ruthless hands. All these instances of right feeling and instinctive appreciation of greatness are in Shakespeare's picture, while they are not at all, or in a much less degree, in Plutarch's.
common in my Loue Verity (Student's Sh.): Compare Polonius's advice to Laertes, I, iii, 61-65, especially 61: ‘Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar’; and Sonnet lxix (where ‘the friend’ is compared to a flower): ‘But why thy odour matcheth not thy show
The solve is this, that thou dost common grow’
（i. e., not exclusive enough in choice of friends).
my sworne Brother W. A. Wright: In the middle ages ‘fratres jurati’ were persons who had taken an oath to share each other's fortunes. Cowel in his Law Dictionary says: ‘Fratres conjurati Are sworn Brothers or Companions. . . . Sometimes they are so called who were sworn to defend the King against his Enemies.’ Compare As You Like It, V, iv, 107, ‘They shook hands and swore brothers.’ Again Much Ado, I, i, 73, He hath every month a new sworn brother.’— Gordon: As if he and the people had sworn, according to the old custom of comrades-at-arms, to stand by each other in everything. Coriolanus is bitterly ironical, for flattery in such a compact is the unpardonable sin. That the people are willing to be flattered shows that they are not fit for such comradeship.
'tis . . . gentle Case (Arden Sh.): ‘Condition’ is disposition, and also quality, trait. Either sense will serve here, according as we understand Coriolanus to insinuate that the flatterer's disposition is gentle in the people's eyes, or that they regard flattery as a gentle trait. Compare Henry V: V, ii, 314, ‘Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me, I cannot,’ etc. See also Mer. of Ven., I, ii, 143, ‘the condition of a saint.’
Seale your knowledge Johnson: I will not strengthen or complete your knowledge. The seal is that which gives authenticity to a writing.
Better it is . . . will I doe Chambers (Warwick Sh.): Heroic verse is not common in the play, but here it is used to express the excited, overstrained condition of Coriolanus. The Citizens have got upon his nerves, and he relieves himself in a moment's interval with this angry outburst.—Case (Arden Sh.): An example of Shakespeare's surviving use of rhyme for sententious reflection and emotional self-expression, both of which are united in this passage.
higher Malone: This is one of the many proofs that several parts of the original folio edition of these plays were dictated by one and written down by another.—W. A. Wright, in reference to the foregoing, says: ‘I have observed similar mistakes which could only have occurred by a compositor, while setting up the type, carrying several words in his mind, and so spelling as he pronounced them to himself. For instance, in Mr King's Antique Gems and Rings, p. 234, the following appeared in a first proof: “Indifferent in themselves, but like the rest, not to be obtruded on the high”; and in the present play, “A vessell under sail” was first printed, “A vessell under sale.”’
this Wooluish tongue Johnson: ‘This woolvish gown’ signifies this rough hirsute gown.—Steevens (Variorum 1773): I own I was surprised, on consulting the old copy, to find the passage printed thus, ‘woolvish tongue.’ Mr Rowe first substituted gown, which has been followed (perhaps without necessity) by all editors. [Steevens did not examine the Ff here.—See Text. Notes.—Ed.] The white robe worn by a candidate was made, I think, of white lamb skins, how comes it then to be called woolvish, unless in allusion to the fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing? Perhaps the poet meant only, Why do I stand with a tongue deceitful as that of the wolf, and seem to flatter these whom I could wish to treat with my usual ferocity? We may perhaps more distinctly read, with this woolvish tongue, unless ‘tongue’ be used for tone or accent. ‘Tongue’ might, indeed, be only a typographical mistake, and the word designed be toge, which is used in Othello. Shakespeare, however, does not appear to have known what the toga hirsuta was, because he has just before called it the napless gown of humility.— Ibid. (Variorum 1778): Since the foregoing note was written I met with the following passage in A Merye Jest of a Man called Howleglas, bl. l. no date, Howleglas hired himself to a taylor, who ‘caste unto him a husbandemans gowne, and had him take a wolfe, and make it up, Than cut Howleglas the husbandmans gowne and made thereof a woulfe with the head and feete, &c. Then sayd the maister, I ment that you should have made up the russet gown, for a husbandmans gowne is here called a wolfe.’ By a wolvish gown, therefore (if gown be the true reading), Shakespeare might have meant Coriolanus to compare the dress of a Roman candidate to the coarse frock of a ploughman, who exposed himself to solicit the votes of his fellow rustics.—Mason (Comments, etc., p. 251): Whether we read gown or toge is of little consequence, as they have both precisely the same meaning, and I should be rather inclined to read gown than toge, merely because that is the language of Coriolanus in the scene preceding, where he says, ‘I cannot Put on the gown, stand naked,’ &c. The only difficulty of the passage lies in the word ‘woolvish.’ It cannot mean, as Johnson supposes, a rough hirsute gown, for Brutus calls it, a little before, ‘The napless vesture of humility.’ The supposing that there is an allusion to the wolf in sheep's clothing is rather a ludicrous idea, and should be treated as such. Nor can I suppose that Shakespeare meant to compare the gown, which he calls the napless vesture of humility, and from the whiteness of which the competitors for the consulate derived their name, to the coarse frock of a ploughman. I therefore suppose that the passage is corrupt, because it is inexplicable as it stands. Perhaps we should read woolen instead of ‘woolvish’; yet that would not sufficiently distinguish it from any other gown, as they were probably all made of that material. I should, therefore, rather suppose that we ought to read foolish, which agrees with what Coriolanus says in the latter part of this speech, ‘Rather than fool it so, Let the high office and the honour go.’—Malone: So in Othello, ‘the toged consuls,’ [I, i, 25]. I suppose the meaning is: ‘Why should I stand in this gown of humility, which is little expressive of my feelings towards the people, as far from being an emblem of my real character as the sheep's clothing on a wolf is expressive of his disposition.’ I believe ‘woolvish’ was used by our author for false or deceitful, and that the phrase was suggested to him, as Mr Steevens seems to think, by the common expression ‘a wolf in sheep's clothing.’ Mr Mason says that this is ‘a ludicrous idea, and ought to be treated as such.’ I have paid due attention to many of the ingenious commentator's remarks in the present edition [1790], and therefore I am sure he will pardon me when I observe that speculative criticism on these plays will ever be liable to error, unless we add to it an intimate acquaintance with the language and writings of the predecessors and contemporaries of Shakespeare. If Mr Mason had read the following line in Churchyard's Legend of Cardinal Wolsey, Mirror for Magistrates, 1587, instead of considering this as a ludicrous interpretation, he would probably have admitted it to be a natural and just explication of the epithet before us, ‘O fye on wolves that march in masking clothes,’ [p. 516, ed. 1610. See also 1 Henry VI: I, iii, 55, and 2 Henry VI: III, i, 78.—Ed.]. The woolvish (gown) or toge is a gown of humility, in which Coriolanus thinks he shall appear in masquerade, and not in his real or natural character. Woolvish cannot mean rough, hirsute, as Dr Johnson interprets it, because the gown Coriolanus wore has already been described as napless. The old copy has ‘tongue’; which was a very natural error for the compositor at the press to fall into, who almost always substitutes a familiar English word for one derived from the Latin, which he does not understand. The very same mistake has happened in Othello, where we find ‘tongued consuls’ for ‘toged consuls.’ The particle ‘in’ shows that ‘tongue’ cannot be right. The editor of the Second Folio solved the difficulty as usual by substituting gown without any regard to the word in the original copy.—Douce: Mr Steevens has, in his note on this passage, cited the romance of Howleglas to show that a husbandman's gown was called a wolf, but quaere if it be called so in this country? It must be remembered that Howleglas is literally translated from the French, where the word ‘loup’ certainly occurs, but I believe it has not the same signification in that language. The French copy also may be literally rendered from the German. [Douce is probably correct in saying that the version from which Steevens quotes is a translation from the French, but the title Howleglas is undoubtedly a translation of the German Eulenspiegel; the French title is Eulespiegel. Flügel (Dict., s. v. Wolf. 18. prov. b.) has, ‘A peasant's coat of a grey color.’ Cotgrave, s. v. Louviere: A wolverin: a gowne or garment furred or lined throughout with wolves skinne.—Ed.]—Ritson: Mr Steevens is, however, clearly right in supposing the allusion to be to the ‘wolf in sheep's clothing’; not, indeed, that Coriolanus means to call himself a wolf, but merely to say: ‘Why should I stand here playing the hypocrite, and simulating the humility which is not in my nature?’—Coleridge (Notes on Coriolanus): That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool we know. Does wolvish or ‘woolvish’ mean ‘made of wool’? If it means wolfish, what is the sense?— Singer appropriates Malone's note on ‘tongue’ and toge, and also Ritson's in regard to the fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing, adding as his own contribution to the discussion a comparison of the passage in All's Well, ‘it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart,’ I, iii, 98.—Knight: We believe that the correction of ‘tongue’ to gown is right. It is difficult to say whether ‘woolvish’ means a gown made of wool, or a gown resembling a wolf, or wolfish. We adopt the latter opinion; for it is no proper description of the gown of humility to call it woollen. By wolfish Coriolanus probably meant to express something hateful. The notion of Steevens that the allusion was to the wolf in sheep's clothing seems merely fanciful.—Verplanck: Steevens, I think, is right in interpreting ‘woolvish’ as deceitful, in allusion to the familiar phrase of ‘a wolf in sheep's clothing.’ ‘Why should I make myself like the wolf, affecting a humility I have not?’—Delius: That Coriolanus here by the words ‘wolvish togue’ means the despised gown, that he according to custom must wear to obtain the peoples voices, is clearer than in just what sense the word ‘wolvish’ is used; whether in reference to the coarse, repellant exterior, wherein Coriolanus appears like a wolf, or in reference to the contradiction between this humble outside show and his own inner feeling of spite and ferocity like a wolf in sheep's clothing. The first elucidation is much the simpler and more natural. Perhaps, though, togue is not the word to be sought in ‘tongue,’ but rather throng, and by ‘wolvish throng’ is meant the Plebeians who press around Coriolanus like wolves around their prey.—Collier (Notes & Emendations, etc., p. 354): ‘Woolvish’ is nothing but a lapse by the printer, who, earlier in the play, did not know what to make of ‘napless’ and called it ‘Naples’—‘the Naples vesture of humility’; here, again, he did not understand what he was putting in type, and therefore committed a singular, and hitherto inexplicable, blunder. A manuscript note in the Folio, 1632, sets all right, and offers a most acceptable emendation—‘woolless togue.’ As the toga was ‘napless,’ so it was woolless, an alteration for the better, that carries conviction on the very face of it. Are we to impute it merely to the sagacity of the early possessor of the Folio, 1632, when nobody since his time has had any notion of the sort? or are we to suppose that he had in this instance, and in some others, a guide by which his speculations were assisted?—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, p. 215): In the substitution of woolless for ‘wolvish’ there is another singular coincidence with a hint by Mr Collier in his edition where attention is called to the gown being napless. In regard to woolvish toge (or gown) the idea is quite evident; Coriolanus says, Why should I stand here playing the hypocrite, in this gown of humility, like the wolf in sheep's clothing? Whether the gown had a nap on it or no would hardly enter here into the mind of the poet or of Coriolanus. It is sufficient that it was simulating humility not in his nature to bring to mind the fable of the wolf.—Anon. (Blackwood's Maga., Sep., 1853, p. 322): In this instance we side most cordially with the margins and Mr Collier against Mr Singer and the ordinary text. The haughty Coriolanus, who is a candidate for the consulship, says, ‘Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here?’ Now Shakespeare, in a previous part of the play, has described the candidate's toga as ‘the napless vesture of humility’; and it is well-known that this toga was of a different texture from that usually worn. Is it not probable, therefore—nay certain—that Coriolanus should speak of it as woolless, the word ‘wolvish’ being altogether unintelligible? Mr Singer, defending the old reading, says it is sufficient that his investiture in this gown ‘was simulating humility not in his nature to bring to mind the fable of the wolf.’ Oh, Mr Singer! but must not the epithet in that case have been sheepish? Surely, if Coriolanus had felt himself to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, he never would have said that he was a sheep in wolves' clothing! [Foot-note to above passage: ‘The German translators, Tieck and Schlegel, adopt the reading of the First Folio and translate: “Warum soll hier mit Wolfsgehuel ich stehen.” Dr Delius concurs with his countrymen, and remarks that the boldness of Shakespeare's constructions readily admits of our connecting the words “in this wolfish tongue” with the words “to beg.” Now, admirable as we believe Dr Delius' English scholarship to be, he must permit us to say that this is a point which can be determined only by a native of this country, and that the construction which he proposes is not consistent with the idiom of our language. Even the German idiom requires with (mit), and not in, a wolf's cry. We cannot recommend him to introduce tongue into his text of our poet.’—The Anonymous Critic has, I think, somewhat misunderstood Delius, who does not justify the Schlegel-Tieck translation entirely, but says: ‘The endeavors to retain the readings of the Folio at all costs frequently cause our German critics to set at defiance all rules of English grammar, even in the case of this passage, and to attribute the anomaly thus produced to the peculiarity of the Shakespearian usage of language’ (Die Tieck'sche Shaksperekritik Beleuchtet, p. 50). Delius does not make reference to this in either of his editions.—Ed.]—Tycho Mommsen (p. 175): ‘Wolvish tongue’ is unintelligible, and neither by auditor nor reader can be connected with ‘to beg’; the dictator (or scribe) was here quite as unfortunate as in a preceding passage, where instead of the somewhat unusual word ‘hire’ he wrote the unintelligible stupid word higher. Shakespeare could offer toge to his public, as ‘flamen’ in II, i, and in Othello ‘toged consuls.’ The wolfish dress may be either the coarse skin of the wolf, or the dress of the wolf in sheep's clothing; the former (though good and formative in itself) requires that we lay greatest stress upon coarse; the latter, as both Steevens and Malone rightly note, is the more natural. But with this last interpretation, which depends upon the general acquaintance with the language of the Bible and fable, it is necessary that not the classic word (toge), but the popular word gown be read. And this word, so thoroughly appropriate, is not supplied by the original text. Thus we are constrained to decide in favor of the MS. Corrector, since woolless corresponds most closely with the poet's idea of the classic dress of the candidate. The copyist and reader were most wofully at fault not only with the two words ‘hire’ and ‘toge,’ but also with a third, woolless, since they did not understand togue and took it for tongue, thus ‘woolvish tongue’ seemed to them a much better sense than ‘woolless tongue’; thus they tinkered with the (oldest) texts. Perhaps also the handwriting here was somewhat illegible.—R. G. White (Sh. Scholar, p. 360): Where is the propriety, especially the poetic propriety, of calling the sheep-skin ‘wolf's clothing’ merely because the wolf wore it? The moment it became wolf's clothing, that moment it ceased to be a disguise, and lost all significance; and besides, ‘wolfish’ means not ‘belonging to a wolf,’ but ‘like a wolf.’ Unquestionably, Shakespeare would never have called a woollen toga ‘woolless’; and the new reading [of Collier's MS. Corrector] cannot be accepted. But since neither ‘wolfish’ nor woolless give a consistent meaning, let us look at the original line, the context, and the other passages of the play, which have a bearing upon this one. The word in the corrupted text seems to have misled all the commentators upon the passage. They evidently regard Coriolanus when standing for the consulship as feeling what our border-men call ‘wolfish about the head and shoulders.’ But the text affords no support for this opinion. Coriolanus feels contempt for the people; he derides the custom, and thinks that it belittles him to conform to it. What Brutus says of him shows no ireful feeling on his part, but merely that he thought the ceremony very small business, [II, i, 250-255]. Coriolanus himself says on a previous occasion: ‘I'd rather have one scratch my head in the sun,
When the alarum were struck, than idly sit
To hear my nothings monstered,’ II, ii, 82-84.
It makes him shame-faced to go through this foolery. When told that he must, according to precedent, speak to the people, he replies: ‘I do beseech you,
Let me o'erleap that custom, for I cannot
Put on the gown, stand naked and entreat them,
For my wounds' sake, to give their suffrage: please you
That I may pass this doing’, II, ii, 148-152.
Again: ‘Cor. It is a part
That I shall blush in acting, and might well
Be taken from the people.
Bru. Mark you that?
Cor. To brag unto them, thus I did, and thus;
Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,
As if I had received them for the hire
Of their breath only!’ Ibid., 159-165.
There is nothing of a wolf in sheep's clothing or a sheep in wolf's clothing in all this. He regards the custom as contemptible, foolish. The same feeling appears when he stands in the Forum; and there he says to a Citizen, with a sneer, ‘I have here the customary gown.’ So again, when he has received the ‘most sweet voices’ of the people and is told by the Tribunes and Menenius to go to the Senatehouse to be invested, he asks: ‘Cor. May I change these garments?
Sic. You may, sir.
Cor. That I'll straight do; and, knowing myself again,
Repair to the senate-house’ (supra 150-154).
He looks upon the ceremony as a preposterous piece of folly, and thinks that the vesture of humility makes a patrician appear ridiculous. ‘Wolfish,’ we have seen, is inadmissible; woolless is equally so, because the toga which Coriolanus wore was made of wool. Is it not plain then that, merely continuing his ridicule, he said, ‘Why in this foolish togue should I stand here?’ Yes, unquestionably, for in this very speech, after only five lines which impeach the binding force of custom, he says, ‘Rather than fool it so Let the high office and the honor go.’ The word in the original is ‘wooluish’; and that it is a typographical error for foolish is confirmed by the fact that in not one of the fifty instances in which Shakespeare uses ‘wolf,’ ‘wolvish,’ or ‘wolves,’ does he spell those words or are they spelled with two o's.—Dyce (ed. i.): It is remarkable that Mr Grant White, quite unconscious of having been anticipated by Mason (whose conjecture is not mentioned in the Variorum Shakespeare), has been at some pains to prove that foolish is the genuine reading.—Ibid. (ed. ii.): In this much controverted passage I adopt the reading of Mr Collier's MS. Corrector—woolless; compare ‘the napless vesture,’ etc. That ‘Tongue’ of the Folio is a mistake for toge we might have been sure, even if a similar error were not found in Othello, I, i, [‘Tongued Consuls’]. [In his Notes on this play, which appeared about five years after the foregoing remarks, White completely changed his view; he there says: ‘“Why in this wolvish gown”—i. e., in this gown, in which, to attain my own ends, I assume a virtue— humility—which I have not, like the wolf in sheep's clothing. The First Folio has “woolvish tongue,” which has been almost universally regarded by modern editors as a misprint for “this woolvish toge.” But with this opinion I cannot agree. For nowhere else does Shakespeare use “toge” or even “toga,” or any word formed from it, often as there was opportunity, almost occasion, in his classical plays. And besides, in the passage of North's Plutarch which he was here dramatising, we have “a poore gowne” and “a simple gowne,” but no mention of a toga; and Shakespeare, we know, stuck closely to his authority in such cases— even to its words when they were names of things. The misprint of “tongue” for “gowne” is not so extravagant but that it might occur even nowadays; and for these reasons, therefore, it seems most probable that the editor of the Second Folio was right in reading “this wolvish gowne.” We might read: “Why, in this wolvish tongue, should I stand here To beg,” &c., i. e., “Why should I stand here to beg in this deceitful tongue”; but the speaker's reply to his own question, “Custom wills me to't,” forbids. Custom enjoined upon him only the napless vesture of humility and the solicitation. Of the various conjectural readings proposed for this passage, no others appear worthy of mention.’]—Staunton: Possibly, after all that has been written about it, the term ‘woolvish’ may have been intended to apply to the mob, and not the vestment, and the genuine reading be ‘wolfish throng.’ [See Note by Delius, ante.—Ed.]—Keightley (Expositor, p. 363): As ‘woolvish’ offers very little sense, we should, with Collier's MS. Corrector, read woolless.—Hudson (ed. i.): We believe [‘woolvish’] to be nothing less nor more than a simple allusion to the scriptural figure of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Not by any means that the poet meant to make Coriolanus call himself a wolf; but he regards the figure in question merely as a general image of one trying to seem what he is not; and so makes the speaker apply it to himself simply as one who stands there clad in ‘the napless vesture of humility,’ while his heart is full of pride and disdain towards the part he is acting, and towards those whose suffrage he is asking. Brutus expresses the same thing afterwards: ‘With a proud heart he wore his humble weeds.’ [In his ed. ii. Hudson's note is somewhat differently worded, but is to the same effect. He there objects to the MS. correction, although accepted by Dyce, on the ground that, as the toga was of wool ‘the Poet would hardly speak of it as woolless.’—Ed.]—Halliwell: I believe ‘woolvish’ is correct, and that it refers to some well-known article of dress; for a wolf-gown is referred to in an inventory dated 1559.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): That ‘tongue’ is misprint for toge is evidenced by a somewhat similar misprint in Othello, I, i, and that ‘woolvish’ is also a misprint for some other word, we think, is nearly as manifest. But inasmuch as we feel none of the proposed substitutions to be the probable emendation, we allow ‘woolvish’ to remain in the text. It is from this desire to leave the original unaltered, if possible, that we refrain from inserting the word here which we have long believed to be the one originally written by Shakeapeare—slavish. Not only does slavish contain nearly all the same letters which form ‘woolvish’; not only does slavish consist completely with either the Folio word ‘tongue’ or the accepted word of later editions, toge; not only does slavish exactly suit the context of this speech, but slavish perfectly accords with the epithets used both by Plutarch and by Shakespeare when mentioning the garment that Coriolanus wears on the present occasion. In Timon, IV, iii, 205, we find the expression ‘This slave-like habit,’ which testifies Shakespeare's employment of a similar expression with regard to coarse and common raiment. While suffering ‘woolvish’ to occupy its place in the text, we must explain that it is usually supposed to mean wolf-like, but, judging from another passage in this play (III, ii, 12), we should rather take it to mean ‘woollenish,’ ‘wooll'nish’ or ‘wool'nish,’ which last elisionally abbreviated form of the word brings us almost precisely to the Folio spelling and printing. [See Note by the Clarkes on III, ii, 12.—Ed.]—Whitelaw: If ‘woolvish’ can mean woollen it is either contemptuous, like ‘woollen vassals’ (III, ii, 12), or, since there was ‘no coat underneath the poor gown,’ it may perhaps be explained by comparison with Love's Labour's, V, ii, 716, ‘I have no shirt, I go woolward for penance.’ Perhaps Shakespeare wrote woollish (or woolish）—the strangeness of the word suggesting either repugnance or contempt.—Kinnear (p. 312), in support of the reading woollen toge, quotes the line III, ii, 12, to which reference has already been made, wherein the plebeians are spoken of as ‘woollen vassals.’ The toge or gown was thus one ‘made of coarse woolen stuff or frieze, too coarse to have any nap; for it is not to be supposed that Marcius would put on a garment worn threadbare by a plebeian, and none other could wear it.’ [Kinnear also quotes from a sumptuary law (Elizabeth 13) which enjoined the wearing of woolen caps for all but the nobility; this seems, however, but little to the purpose, as the law does not make any mention of other articles of dress.—Ed.]—Schmidt (Coriolanus) retains the Folio reading in his text, and thereon remarks thus: ‘A very obscure expression, but one which the poet has chosen evidently in reference to the saying, Who keeps company with wolves will learn to howl. Why should I, asks Coriolanus, submit to this wretched situation and howl with wolves?’ After reviewing the various attempts at amending the passage, Schmidt concludes his note with a special objection to Steevens's toge or togue, characterising it as the most inadmissible which the poet could have used.—W. A. Wright: Coriolanus the soldier in his citizen's gown of humility felt like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Cotgrave has both ‘Toge’ and ‘Togue: f. A gowne; long robe or garment.’ For ‘wolvish’ see Huloet, Abcedarium, ‘Woluyshe, or of a wolfe. Lupinus.’ [Wright considers that the passage in Othello, so often cited in this connection, is sufficient evidence that ‘tongue’ is here a corruption of togue or toge.—Ed.]—Beeching (Falcon Sh.): ‘Woolvish’ is generally explained as an inverted reference to the wolf in sheep's clothing, but though Menenius called Coriolanus a sheep (II, i, 10), he would hardly call himself one. A more likely explanation would be: Why like the wolf should I be thus masquerading? Or can it refer to the Roman wolf, i. e., the Roman people?—Miss Porter (First Folio Sh.): Malone might have added in support of his change, toge, that the were-superstition, or the changing of men into wolves, was a commonplace of the superstition of Shakespeare's day, and that one of the characteristics of the were-wolf was that he could turn his skin inside out when he wanted to masquerade in a ‘napless gown,’ hence the pertinence of the phrase. Steevens is not altogether happy in the form of his explanation. That Coriolanus should desire to indulge in his ‘usual ferocity’ seems to convict him of the wolfishness he here abhors. The best comment on the text, as it stands, is the character of Coriolanus, as drawn by Shakespeare, and his peculiar dislike to howls in public over deeds he accounts incumbent upon nobility to accomplish for the love of virtue, as a matter of course, and in silence. He refuses at first (ii, 163) ‘To brag unto them, thus I did, and thus’; later (iii, 49-53), ‘What must I say . . . ? Plague upon't, I cannot bring my tongue to such a pace.’ When Menenius begs him ‘speak to 'em in wholesome manner,’ he even then tells the Citizens that he never yet desired ‘to trouble the poor with begging’ (iii, 75, 76); finally he bursts out against standing in this Woolvish tongue To begge. Altogether there seems to be no reason whatsoever for any other word here than tongue. He objects consistently to howling with the wolves, yelling with the pack, the common ‘cry of curs,’ as he says later.—Thiergen (p. 201): Whether we read with the First Folio ‘Woolvish tongue’ or with the Second, ‘toge,’ both expressions remain obscure or incorrect; since if the wolf in sheep's clothing is meant we must read sheepish toge, and in the other case if we interpret in this wolvish tongue as to howl with the wolves to stand in a tongue is nonsense.—Case (Arden Sh.): Gowne, of the Folios, is the natural word, and a reasonable original of the misprint tongue. It has also the advantage of being North's word in his account of the custom of Rome. For toge, may be urged that it is a genuine English form of the Roman word toga which might be expected in this place, and if it were quite certain that toged of the first quarto of Othello, I, i, 52, were the right reading, and tongued of the Folio and later quartos a misprint of it, that would be further strong evidence. As it is, it carries weight. The N. E. D. gives examples of toge from the alliterative fourteenth century Morte Arthure, ed. Banks, 1900, p. 86, l. 3189, ‘In toges of tarsse full richelye attyrde,’ and Urquart's Rabelais. The force of ‘woolvish’ presents an equal difficulty. It is supposed that the material of the woollen gown is alluded to, in combination with the expression ‘a wolf in sheep's clothing.’ Coriolanus with pride and hate in his heart wears the gown of humility, and puts the fact with fierce irony.—Tucker Brooke (Yale Sh.): Wolf's toga, or garment. Why should I stand here like a wolf in sheep's clothing? One of the best of many emendations is woolless toge. [The majority of modern editors follow the reading of the Cambridge and Globe editors, which is substantially that of Steevens, ‘woolvish’ or ‘wolvish toge,’ and are thus constrained to adopt Steevens's interpretation, that there is here an allusion to the fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing. With this view I am disposed to agree, notwithstanding the cogent objection made to it by the Anonymous contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, that if there be meant such a reference it should be ‘sheepish’ dress, not wolfish; but it is quite plain that had this latter word been the one employed there would scarcely have been any reader or auditor who would apply it in the sense intended; Coriolanus would have been compared to a lamb led to the slaughter; and then no one, since the time of its first mention until 1853, had noticed the discrepancy. As a very slight contribution to this long note, and in equally small corroboration of the Folio reading, I offer the following: In Gascoigne's translation of the Italian comedy Gli Suppositi, entitled Supposes, occurs the following line, ‘Tōgues? I pray you what did my tōgue ever hurt you?’ I, iii. (p. 196, ed. Cunliffe). Here, as is often the case, the letter n is represented by a mark placed over the õ. Possibly the word togue in the present line was the one occurring in the MS., and the compositor, not understanding, thought that the mark over the o was simply omitted, as a man might omit to dot an i or cross a t; it may be noticed also that in the text the word directly above ‘Tongue’ is ‘which’; the long descending turn of the second letter, h, might have seemed to supply the missing mark.—Ed.]
To begge of Hob . . . Vouches Johnson: Why do I stand here in this ragged apparel to beg of Hob and Dick, and such others as make their appearance here, their unnecessary votes?—Badham (Criticism, p. 13): The punctuation destroys the sense; for of what force is that clause ‘which do appear’? Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote: ‘Which do appear their needless vouches,’ i. e., which present or offer their needless attestations of my merits. So the word ‘appear’ is used in IV, iii, 10, ‘You had more beard when I last saw you, but your favour is well appeared by your tongue.’ [See notes ad loc.—Ed.]—Hudson (ed. ii.): He calls the ‘vouches’ needless because, in his opinion, an election by the Senate is, or ought to be, enough. [Hudson explains ‘do appear’ in the same manner as Badham, also quoting the line IV, iii, 10 in illustration. Hudson's remark that Shakespeare has it ‘repeatedly thus’ is not borne out by example. Schmidt (Lex.) does not record a single example of this transitive use of ‘appear’; the N. E. D. is equally silent. Such being the case, Johnson's interpretation is the only one admissible.—Ed.]. Hob Murray (N. E. D., s. v. sb1. 1.): A familiar or rustic variation of the Christian name Robert or Robin. Hence formerly a generic name for a rustic, a clown. 1573. Tusser Husbandry, ix. (1878), 17: ‘To raise betimes the lubberlie, both snorting Hob and Margerie.’ [The present line also quoted.]
What Custome . . . Truth to o're-peere Joseph Hunter (ii, 118): We can never sufficiently appreciate the depth of the wisdom in this wonderful man. He seems to be acquainted with every political or moral maxim, and to know what is to be said in favor of it or against it. His views are also often pre sented, as in this instance, with inimitable felicity, so simply, so easily, so gracefully, the metaphor so beautifully kept up to the end, and the meaning so clearly and vividly brought out. There is more of his political wisdom in this play, in Timon, and in Troilus and Cressida than in any other of the plays.—Kreyssig (i, 491): The train of thought in this speech shows Coriolanus already to have abandoned the single indispensable rule of life of the conservative aristocracy. His own subjective consciousness he turns against sacred custom. He forgets that every prerogative becomes, and must become, a bond for him who enjoys it; that unconditional personal freedom leads to isolation, and is incompatible with the struggle for power. And thus he is driven to his fate before the wind of passion. In this scene the drama easily displays its highest skill.—Snider (ii, 229): Coriolanus cannot submit to an institution—his individual will is supreme. This first discipline of office—the suppression of his personal caprice and the submission to the established custom—cannot be endured by him. Hence on this side he is as revolutionary as the plebeians. The two parties thus reach the same point— the destruction of the institutions which restrain their tendencies. The patricians, however, as the true conservative element of society seek to conciliate both sides and to retain the ancient laws and customs of the nation.—J. C. Collins (Studies in Sh., p. 82): A sentiment peculiarly characteristic of the Greeks was their superstitious reverence for what was popularly accepted and become custom. This continually finds expression in the Greek dramas, and is, indeed, woven into the very fabric of their ethics. We need go no further than a line in Sophocles, as it is typical of innumerable other passages, ‘what custom establishes outmasters truth,’ Frag. 84, and Euripides, Bacchæ, 894, ‘What has long been custom, is divine.’ This is exactly Shakespeare's philosophy, [the present line quoted], ‘Our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time’ (IV, vii, 51, 52), but illustration would be endless.—Brandes (ii, 253): Coriolanus is utterly unaware that this speech of his strikes at the very root of that ultra-conservatism which he affects. The very thing he has refused to understand is, that if we invariably follow custom the follies of the past would never be swept away, nor the rocks which hinder our progress be burst asunder. To Coriolanus, what is customary is right, and he never realises that his disdain for the Tribunes and people has led him into a politically untenable position. We are by no means sure that Shakespeare's perceptions in this case were any keener than his hero's, but, consciously or unconsciously, it is this very inconsistency in Coriolanus's character which makes it so vividly lifelike.—MacCallum (p. 601): It is characteristic of this spirit [of self-centred confidence and egotism] which really makes a man a law unto himself and the measure of all things, that though by all his training and prejudices inclined to the traditional and conservative in politics, yet, if use-and-wont presses hard against his own pride, he shows himself an innovator of the most uncompromising kind. Coriolanus objects once and again to the prescriptive forms of election. [In this and the following lines] he blossoms out as the reddest of radicals, though a radical of the Napoleonic type.
Dust on antique Time Deighton: ‘Time’ is spoken of as if it were a volume so covered with dust that no one would care to take it down from its shelf; compare Jonson, The Poetaster, V, i, ‘his free hand That sweeps the cobwebs from unused virtue.’—R. G. White: The Folio, with manifest error, has, ‘o'repeere.’ This ill-printed play is remarkable for its excessive misuse of the apostrophe. [White adopts, however, this ‘manifest error’ in his ed. ii, and without comment.—Ed.]
moe Bayfield (p. 195): While there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare ever used this form, it is certainly impossible he should have used it here, since the word must be stressed according to the scansion given, as the context shows. More is indispensable. ‘Moe,’ which does not occur in the prose of this play, is found once again at IV, ii, 21, where also it must have a stress, though it forms the upbeat: ‘Moe noble blowes, then ever you wise words.’
I haue seene, and heard of Farmer: Coriolanus seems now, in earnest, to petition for the consulate; perhaps we may better read, ‘—battles thrice six I've seen, and you have heard of.’—Collier (ed. ii.): Dr Farmer would lose a fine characteristic turn by Coriolanus. By the text, as it stands, we perceive that the hero, instantly on his mention of the thrice six battles he has seen, becomes ashamed of his apparent boasting, and adds, therefore, the qualifying words, ‘—and heard of,’ meaning that some of the thrice six battles he had not so much seen, as heard of.—Dyce (ed. ii.): Here ‘heard of’ seems to mean famous, and to refer either to the battles or to the speaker. Mr Collier's explanation is a strange one.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke: Taking into consideration Coriolanus's scoffing manner of speaking here, we think this means, ‘eighteen battles I have seen something of, and heard something of.’ He has just before sneeringly said he would remind the voters of a time ‘when some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran from the noise of our own drums,’ and he may well have here in his mind the sounds as well as the sights of a battle field. If the expression ‘I have seen and heard of’ include—as we think it does—the elliptically conveyed effect of ‘I have seen and made heard of,’ or caused to be heard of, it is thoroughly in Shakespeare's comprehensive style.—Hudson (ed. ii.): This, if the text be right, must mean, apparently, ‘I have taken part in eighteen battles, and those so considerable that I have since heard them talked about.’ The words ‘and heard of’ seem, to say the least, rather odd and out of place. Perhaps it should be ‘and shared of,’ which is a modest equivalent for been a part of, and is good English for had a share of; therewithal it accords with what Cominius says in the preceding scene, where, after describing the hero's first exploit, he continues, ‘And in the brunt of seventeen battles since.’—Rolfe: This must be thrown in contemptuously, like the ‘some less, some more’ in the next line. The Plebeians do not see at the time that he is mocking them (l. 171) while begging their voices.—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): One would have thought that this passage required no annotation, but Dyce's note shows how the simplest things may be hidden from the wise and prudent. . . . Of course Coriolanus is quizzing the people by affected magniloquence, from which he occasionally lapses into irony. The effect on the people would be to puzzle them, which would be partly Coriolanus's intention. It is perhaps allowable to call attention to the excellent development of this scene. At first Coriolanus is simply cross and speaks shrewishly to the citizens; then he recovers his good temper and is chiefly bored by them; then when they refer to his wounds he becomes angry again and almost resolves to give up the consulship; finally he reflects that as the ceremony is half over he may as well finish it, and for the remainder of the time throws himself into the part with exaggerated urbanity.—Kinnear (p. 313) proposes that ‘you heard of’ be read in the preceding line and ‘I have’ in this. In both of which readings he is, however, anticipated; the former by Farmer and the latter by Keightley.—Ed.
Remaines . . . Senate Abbott (§ 404): This construction is quite as correct as our modern form with ‘it.’ The sentence ‘That in . . . Senate’ is the subject to ‘remains.’ So, ‘Happiest of all is (it or this), that her gentle spirit Commits itself to you to be directed,’ Mer. of Ven., III, ii, 166.
Will you along For other examples of this omission of the verb of motion after the preposition ‘along,’ and also after will and is, see Abbott, §§ 30 and 405.
'Tis warme at's heart Delius: Impatience and rancor are hot within his heart.—Whitelaw: There is rage in his heart.—[To both of these interpretations Schmidt, rightly I think, dissents; he explains the phrase as meaning, It accords completely with his desire; and compares the speech of Nestor to Ulysses, ‘He is not yet through warm: force him with praises,’ Tro. & Cress., II, iii, 232. Compare also, ‘It warms the very sickness in my heart,’ Hamlet, IV, vii, 56.— Rolfe likewise, dissenting to Whitelaw's interpretation, says: ‘It more likely refers to the gratification he evidently feels, though too proud to express it.’—Ed.]
haue you chose For other examples of this form of the participle see, if needful, Abbott, § 343.
No . . . he did not mock vs See Appendix: Shakespeare and the Masses, R. W. Chambers, p. 712.
aged Custome Warburton: This was a strange inattention. The Romans at this time had but lately changed the regal for the consular government, for Coriolanus was banished the eighteenth year after the expulsion of the kings.— Malone: Perhaps our author meant by ‘aged custom’ that Coriolanus should say, the custom which requires the consul to be of a certain prescribed age will not permit that I shall be elected, unless by the voice of the people that rule should be broken through. This would meet with the objection made in note on ‘teach,’ II, i, 279; but I doubt much whether Shakespeare knew the precise consular age even in Tully's time, and therefore think it more probable that the words ‘aged custom’ were used by our author in their ordinary sense, however inconsistent with the recent establishment of consular government at Rome. Plutarch had led him into an error concerning this ‘aged custom.’ See note on II, ii, 96.— W. A. Wright: The custom was not yet twenty years old, but Shakespeare was not thinking of dates when he wrote this. [An inattention on the part of Shakespeare more interesting, I think, than the question of date is to be found in the fact of his giving to the 3 Citizen a report of what Coriolanus said, containing words uttered by him in his soliloquy, which the Citizens could not have heard, as they were not present. The only reference to Custom made by Coriolanus is contained in his remark in regard to ‘the customary gown.’ Shakespeare's audience had heard Coriolanus inveigh against custom and that was all-sufficient.—Ed.]
Why . . . ignorant to see't Warburton: ‘Ignorant’ at that time signified impotent.—Heath (p. 417): ‘Ignorant’ doth not signify impotent. The sense is, Why had you not the apprehension to perceive it, or perceiving it, why did you vote for him?—Johnson: ‘Were you ignorant to see it?’ is, ‘did you want knowledge to discern it?’—Case (Arden Sh.): A peculiar use of the word ‘ignorant’ in relation to the context, to which there is no parallel in Shakespeare or in the N. E. D.—[Schmidt (Lex.) classifies the present use of ‘ignorant’ under 4. dull, silly, simple; and in his own edition later says: ‘We should expect here “too ignorant to see it”: evidently, dull in seeing it, blind to it; compare a somewhat similar expression in Two Gentlemen: “He, being in love, could not see to garter his hose,” [II, iii, 56], which would come nearer to our present passage if we interpret, “he was blind to garter his hose.”’—Wright compares Tempest, I, ii, 264, ‘Sorceries terrible To enter human hearing,’ thus taking ‘ignorant’ to stand for ‘too ignorant.’—Ed.]
To yeeld your Voyces For other examples of this omission of as in relatival constructions see Abbott, § 281.
lesson'd Cholmeley (Arnold's School Sh.): That is, taught by us. Com pare l. 230 below, and Richard III: I, iv, 246, ‘Ay, millstones, as he lesson'd us to weep.’ The rest of the sentence is all subordinate to ‘told him.’ You might have said that he was your enemy as a private citizen, and that it would be folly to make him consul if he meant to be so still.
arriuing A place of Potencie Abbott (§ 198) gives other examples of this omission of the preposition with a verb of motion: ‘Ere we could arrive the point proposed,’ Jul. Cæs., I, ii, 110; ‘those powers . . . have arrived our coast,’ 3 Henry VI: V, iii, 8.
A place . . . o'th'State W. A. Wright: That is, a position of power in the management of state affairs. Or ‘potency and sway’ may be equivalent to ‘powerful influence.’ See I, viii, 6.
Plebeij Wright notes that this is the only passage wherein Shakespeare uses this form of the word. Elsewhere it is Plebeians.
Would thinke vpon you Malone: Would retain a grateful remembrance of you
Tying Walker (Versification, p. 119): Words in which a short vowel is preceded by a long one or a diphthong, among the rest may be particularly noticed such present participles as doing, going, dying, playing, &c., are frequently contracted; the participles almost always. [Walker gives a large number of examples in illustration.]
free Contempt Johnson: That is, with contempt open and unrestrained.
Heart Verity (Student's Sh.): ‘Heart’ here used with the idea of ‘mind intelligence’ rather than ‘courage’; ‘had you tongues,’ were you given tongues that you might use them against the guidance of judgment?—Case, in reference to the foregoing, says, ‘It is more likely that, though the expression is condensed, spirit, action in speech, judgment are all involved: Were you quite spiritless? Had you judgment and yet voted against its dictates? The N. E. D. cites this passage under sense “The seat of courage: hence Courage, spirit,” and not under “Mind,” where III, i, 311 post is given. It cannot be repeated too often that precise correspondence in thought must not be demanded from Elizabethans when they do not appear to give it.’
Against . . . Tongues Staunton alone of all the editors retains the arrangement of these lines as in the Folio. See Text. Notes.
deny'd . . . Bestow Abbott (§ 382): The Elizabethans seem to have especially disliked the repetition which is now considered necessary in the latter of two clauses connected by a relative or a conjunction. Here in strictness we ought to have ‘bestowed’ or ‘do you bestow.’
againe Here used metaphorically for, on the other hand; compare, ‘The one is my sovereign, . . . the other again Is my kinsman,’ Rich. II: II, ii, 113. See Abbott, § 27. of him For other examples of ‘of’ thus used metaphorically for on see Abbott, § 175.
Bestow . . . that sound Walker (Crit., iii, 211): We should arrange and write, perhaps: ‘. . . bestow
Your sued-for tongues?
3 Cit. He's not confirmed; we may
Deny him yet.
2 Cit. And will deny him: I
Will have five hundred voices of that sound.’
your su'd-for Tongues Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 88): How the old reading, ‘su'd-for,’ can be made to tally with the words that stand immediately over it, they should have told us who have thought fit to retain it; for the editor's part, he sees no way of doing it, and therefore thinks his change necessary [see Text. Notes]; it is wanting too to perfect the verse; but that was no consideration with them who have contrived to make it out otherwise. And, indeed, their exploits of this sort throughout all Shakespeare, and this play in particular, must for ever entitle them to a large share of praise for their niceness of ear, great critical acumen, and greater fidelity.—Steevens: Your voices that hitherto have been solicited.— Malone: Your voices, not solicited by verbal application, but sued-for by this man's merely standing forth as a candidate. ‘Your sued-for tongues,’ however, may mean your voices, to obtain which so many make suit to you; and perhaps the latter is the more just interpretation.
Enforce his Pride Johnson: Object his pride, and enforce the objection.— Steevens: So, afterwards, ‘Enforce him with his envy to the people,’ III, iii, 4.—W. A. Wright: That is, urge his pride as an argument, lay stress upon it. See Jul. Cæs., III, ii, 43: ‘His glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death.’
Seruices Abbott (§ 471): The plural and possessive cases of nouns in which the singular ends in s, se, ss, ce, and ge are frequently written, and still more frequently pronounced, without the additional syllable. See III, iii, 148 post.
Which . . . fashion Abbott (§ 456): Almost any syllables, however lengthy in pronunciation, can be used as the unaccented syllables in a trisyllabic foot, provided they are unemphatic. It is not usual, however, to find two such unaccented syllables as in [the first foot of this present line].
Lay a fault . . . on him Beeching (Falcon Sh.): Here the Tribunes break with truth; their office is new, and they dislike taking its responsibility. They have every confidence that their end is wise, but in the choice of means display the moral cowardice of a despised race. No doubt personal pique mingles with their motives, but there is nothing to show it to be paramount.
That we . . . on him Hudson (ed. ii.): The meaning seems to be: ‘we labour'd, or took pains, that there might be no obstacle or hindrance to excuse you from voting for him.’ Endeavored to have, or to leave, ‘no impediment between.’ The language is somewhat obscure. Here we have a right piece of demagogical craft; the sneaking ‘wealsmen’ trying to creep, underhand, into the good graces of the patricians while setting the dogs to worrying them.
after our commandment Abbott (§ 141): That is, ‘according to,’ Latin secundum. Compare, ‘Neither reward us after our iniquities,’ in our Prayer book. [Also: ‘That it may please thee to giue vs an heart to loue & dread thee, and diligently to liue after thy commandements’ (The Letanie: Booke of Common Prayer, 1604, sig. n. verso). The present line seems almost to have been suggested by this last.—Ed.]
Then what you should Heath (p. 417), with Pope's rearrangement of these lines before him, suggests that the ‘lame verse’ may be restored by reading ‘with what,’ wherein, as may be seen by the Text. Notes, he was anticipated by Hanmer.—Ed.
To Voyce For other examples of this construction see Abbott, § 349. Beeching notes: This is the only example in Shakespeare wherein ‘voice’ is thus used as a verb, in the sense to vote for.
hither . . . twice being Censor Pope: This verse I have supplied (see Text. Notes), a line having been certainly left out in this place, as will appear to any one who consults the beginning of Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus, from whence this passage is directly translated.—Theobald: I have taken notice, in the course of these notes, of many anachronisms knowingly committed by our Author. I cannot help observing that he is guilty of more than one here through an inadvertence and desire of copying Plutarch at all hazards. This passage, as Mr Pope rightly informs us, is directly translated from that Greek biographer; but I'll tell Mr Pope a piece of history, which, I dare say, he was no more aware of than our Author was. Plutarch, in the entrance of Coriolanus's life, tracing the origin of the Marcian family, blends his account not only with ancestors but the descendants of that great man; and Shakespeare in his haste (or perhaps his inacquaintance) with this particular point not attending to Plutarch's drift; but, taking all the persons named to be Coriolanus's ancestors, has strangely tripped in time, and made his Tribune talk of persons and things not then in being. For instance, he is made to talk of Censors. Now Coriolanus was killed in the year 266, A. U. C., but no Censors were ever created at Rome till 46 years after that period, in the year 312. Again, here is mention not only of a Censor, but of Censorinus. Now Caius Marcius Rutulus, when he came a second time to that office, on account of the known law propounded by him, was dignified with that additional name, in the year 487. But this was not until 220 years after the death of Coriolanus. And then again here is mention of the Marcian waters being brought into Rome. But we have the positive testimony of Julius Frontinus that they had no Aqueducts at Rome till the year 441, and that the Marcian water was not introduced till the year 613, so that the Tribunes are made to talk of a fact 347 years later in time than the period of Coriolanus. I would not be supposed to found any merit on this discovery, much less to be desirous of convicting my Author of such mistakes, but I thought it proper to decline a charge of ignorance that might have been laid at my door had I passed this affair over in silence. Mr Pope, 'tis plain, tho' he took the pains to add the conjectural line about Censorinus, was not aware of this confusion in point of chronology, or of our Author's innocent trespass. Non omnia possumus omnes.—Warburton, without referring to Theobald's note, calls attention to the anachronism of a mention of a Censor here, and to the confusion between the ancestry and posterity of Coriolanus; he adds: ‘Another instance of Shakespeare's inadvertency, from the same cause, we have in 1 Henry IV, where an account is given of the prisoners took on the plains of Holmedon, “Mordake the Earl of Fife, and eldest son To beaten Douglas,” [I, i, 71]. But the Earl of Fife was not son to Douglas, but to Robert, Duke of Albany, governor of Scotland. He took his account from Holinshed, whose words are: “And of prisoners among others were these, Mordack, Earl of Fife, son to the governor Arkimbald Earl Douglas,” etc. And he imagined that the governor and Earl Douglas were one and the same person.’ [This note Warburton did not repeat, or make reference to this appearance of it, in his notes on 1 Henry IV.—Ed.]— Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 89): Here, indeed, are anachronisms with a witness; for Censorinus and Quintus and Publius were descendants, not ancestors, of Coriolanus, and that many generations beneath. The source of this mistake of the poet's sprung from too hasty a transcript of a passage in his Plutarch. As a drama his play is not much the worse for it; and yet it strikes the editor's fancy that he saw the fault while 'twas in making, and meant to have mended it; and that the gap was a gap in his own copy caus'd by this intention, and not a slip of the printer's, as usual.—Malone gives the passage from Plutarch which was the cause of this confusion; and, without reference to Theobald's note, gives the dates of the first Censorship and the introduction of the Marcian waters. He thus concludes his note: ‘Can it be supposed that he who would disregard such anachronisms, or rather he to whom they were not known, should have changed Cato, which he found in his Plutarch, to Calves, from a regard to chronology?’ See I, iv, 82.—Verplanck: Shakespeare misunderstood the biographer, and supposed that he meant to give the genealogy of his hero, when he intended merely to speak of the illustrious men who had at different times sprung from the Marcian family, some before Coriolanus, and the last named long after him. Yet it is a singular circumstance, which shows the little real value of such minute criticism, that Niebuhr and the modern school of critical Roman historians, while they allow the story of Coriolanus to be substantially true, yet maintain that he must have lived much later than the date assigned to him by the popular histories. If they are correct in this theory, the Poet is accidentally much nearer to the chronological truth than many of the learned critics who have been so precise in marking the number of years he has gone astray.—Delius: The ‘darling of the people’ of Pope's addition has but little of the true Shakespearian ring; it is, moreover, not to be found in Plutarch, whom Shakespeare is here somewhat closely following, without noticing that Plutarch is mentioning not alone ancestors but descendants of Coriolanus.—MacCallum (p. 487, foot-note): The addition by Delius seems preferable to the reading of the Cambridge Editors. In the first place, it is closer to North, and agrees with Shakespeare's usual practice of keeping to North's words so far as possible. In the second place, it is closer to the Folio text, involving only the displacement of a comma. In the third place, it is simpler to suppose that a whole single line has been missed out than that parts of two have been amputated, and the remainders run together.—Collier (Notes & Emendations, etc., p. 354): Pope's line respecting Censorinus was not wanted, inasmuch as this portion of the speech of Brutus was struck out by the old Corrector, possibly, because he saw the defect, and was not in a condition to remedy it. Nevertheless, something was at one time written in the margin, but it is so erased as not now to be legible.—Lettsom (Walker's Shakespeare's Versification; Preface, p. xxi.): It is worth observing that though Collier's old Corrector has inserted nearly a dozen lines in the text, while Walker has pointed out several places where lines appear to be missing, and in some instances has attempted to supply the deficiencies, their opinions in this respect never coincide. On the passage in Coriolanus, where Pope has inserted the line, ‘And Censorinus darling of the people,’ they are both silent. This is the more to be regretted, as scarcely any supplementary verse could be less satisfactory than Pope's. However the lost verse may have begun, it must have ended with the words ‘nam'd Censorinus,’ as is clear from what immediately follows.—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, etc., p. 216), in reference to the foregoing comment on the omission by the MS. Corrector, exclaims: ‘A pretty argument truly! What then becomes of his “authorities,” which we are led to believe he consulted on other occasions? I undertake to say that Pope's line is a much more judicious addition to the text, as evidently necessary and warranted by the passage in Plutarch, than any of the uncalled for interpolations of the correctors so triumphantly dwelt upon by Mr Collier!’—Tycho Mommsen (Der Perkins Folio, p. 437), on this same head, asks: If the MS. Corrector, being aware of this anachronism, struck out this passage, why did he make the correction ‘Cato's’ for Calves, which quite as evidently was an anachronism, or why did he let stand the lines in regard to the introduction of the Marcian water?—R. G. White: I am responsible for the addition of chosen to line 260; and in justification of my text cite the lack of the two syllables in the Folio, and the presence of the word in the above passage from Plutarch. [Singer, ed. ii., has herein anticipated White.—Ed.]—Cambridge Edd. (Note V.): The reading we have given in the text leaves the words of the Folios still in their order, and introduces what must have been the significant fact that Censorinus was chosen ‘by the people.’ A stain or rent in the copy might have rendered parts of two lines illegible, the remainder being unskilfully pieced together by transcriber or printer.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): Our unwillingness to disturb a generally received reading makes us adopt Pope's line as it is, else we should have preferred to give the line thus, ‘The darling of the people, Censorinus,’ as then not only the rhythm would be better, but the surname would be brought more immediately in connection with the words, ‘and nobly nam'd so.’— Schmidt (Coriolanus) marks here a line omitted, offering as one to supply its place, ‘And he that was surnamed Censorinus.’ [This version, according to Wright (Clarendon Sh.), was also proposed by Dr Brinsley Nicholson.—Ed.]— R. M. Spence (Notes & Queries, 9 June, 1894, p. 443): Perhaps with no other passage in Shakespeare has conjectural emendation taken greater liberties; while, as I shall demonstrate, the wholesale emendation is altogether unnecessary, emendation is needed, but it consists only of the correction of a common misprint and the addition of a single word, the omission of which can be easily accounted for. The misprint is ‘so’ for as. This ‘so,’ if I mistake not, was what put Pope and others on the wrong scent, backwards instead of forwards. Had they observed the punctuation in the Folio (the comma between ‘nam'd’ and ‘so’), the misprint would have become self-evident. The word Censor has been omitted from a cause which is often a source of mistake—inattention on the part of the printer to the consecutive repetition of the same word. Again the punctuation of the Folio (the comma at the end of the line) might have guided the critics aright. As indubitably the true reading I give with confidence: And nobly nam'd, as twice being censor, Censor Was his great ancestor. First we have censor, the official title, and then Censor, the abbreviated English form of Censorinus, the honorable name conferred on C. Marcius Rutilus, in recognition of the fact that he had held the censorship twice. As to the scanning of the line now restored, it is a regular line of five accents with an additional syllable. [The title at the head of this paragraph runs, ‘The Solution of the Long-standing Crux in “Coriolanus.”’ Whether this be the author's own, or one supplied by the Editor of N. & Q., it is, I think, in either case injudicious. Modest or deferential introduction of a purely conjectural emendation inspires acquiescence, whereas assertion is apt to beget hostility. In proof of this it may be said that but two of the subsequent editors or commentators (Cholmeley and E. K. Chambers) have shared Spence's ‘confidence’ in this ‘indubitable’ addition, or have even taken any notice of it.—Ed.]—Herford (Eversley Sh.), discarding all emendations, leaves these lines as in the Folio. He adds: ‘Professor Littledale proposes a comma at “being,” which gives a harsh but possible sense.’
twice being Censor Steevens: For the sake of harmony I have arranged these words as they stand in our author's original—North's translation of Plutarch —‘the people had chosen him censor twice.’—Collier: Shakespeare seems to have entertained a different notion; and what Steevens calls ‘harmony’ Shakespeare probably considered monotony. His great object, as regards versification, seems from the first to have been to free it from the weighty words constantly recurring at the ends of lines, which gave such a burdensome dulness to the delivery of the verse of his immediate predecessors. Steevens, by his alteration, introduced the very fault which Shakespeare seems anxious to avoid. [Collier is, I think, unjust. By ‘harmony’ Steevens apparently refers, not to the versification, but to the agreement with Plutarch. Steevens was an offender on many occasions in the manner Collier mentions, but this is not one of them.—Ed.]
Skaling Johnson: That is, weighing his past and present behaviour.— Schmidt: This is the usual explanation, but, according to the view of Sicinius, there is no difference between the past and present behaviour of Coriolanus, but rather both the former and the latter show him to be the constant enemy to the people. With reference to I, i, 40, we should have to take it in another sense: reviewing his present by his past behavior.—W. A. Wright: That is, weighing, and so comparing, not contrasting. Coriolanus had been uniform in his behaviour to the people, their ‘fixed enemy.’ The word is used probably in the same sense in Meas. for Meas., III, i, 266, ‘The poor Mariana advantaged and the corrupt deputy scaled’; that is, weighed in the balance and found wanting.
repent in their election For other examples of ‘in’ used metaphorically for in the case of, about, see Abbott, § 162.
This Mutinie . . . for greater W. A. Wright: The construction is again confused. The sense is, It were better to run the risk of this mutiny than stay, &c.
he fall in rage W. A. Wright: We usually say ‘in a rage,’ but we find in King Lear, II, iv, 299, ‘The king is in high rage.’ [See Abbott, § 159.]
both obserue . . . anger Johnson: Mark, catch, and improve the opportunity which his hasty anger will afford us.—W. A. Wright: Both watch for the opportunity which his anger will give, and be ready to avail ourselves of it. To ‘answer’ occurs in this play (I, ii, 22) in the sense of ‘to meet in combat,’ and hence to answer an occasion is to meet and take advantage of it. Compare All's Well, I, i, 168, ‘Answer the time of request.’
streame o'th'People Malone: So, in Henry VIII, ‘The rich stream Of Lords and ladies having brought the queen,’ etc., [IV, i, 62].