William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

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all season'd Office Johnson: All office established and settled by time, and made familiar to the people by long use.—W. A. Wright: That is, all office well ripened or matured and rendered palatable to the people by time. For the two senses of ‘season,’ which appear to be combined in this passage, compare Hamlet, III, iii, 86, ‘When he is fit and season'd for his passage’; and I, ii, 192, ‘Season your admiration for a while With an attent ear.’ Mer. of Ven., IV, i, 197, ‘And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.’—Rolfe: Schmidt (Lex.) makes ‘season'd’ = ‘qualified, tempered,’ which seems to us favoured by the context. Such limited power is the natural antithesis to power tyrannical. Besides, the office of the tribunes, against which the opposition of Coriolanus was specially directed, was not a long-established one. [Sicinius is not here referring directly to the office of the Tribunes, but rather to the office which the people held in the government; this it was which Coriolanus had always opposed. The words ‘all season'd office’ shows this, I think; had he meant the office of the Tribunes, he would more likely have said ‘a season'd office.’—Ed.]— Kinnear (p. 323): That is, wholesome, that keeps the public weal in healthy life. Compare I, i, 84, ‘they nere car'd for us yet . . . repeale daily any wholesome Act established against the rich, and provide more piercing Statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor.’—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): I prefer Johnson's explanation to Schmidt's. It is true that, although certain popular rights, such as a say in the choice of consul, were of old standing, yet the tribunate was quite an innovation. But the tribunes themselves were the last people to make this distinction.—Verity (Student's Sh.): ‘Season'd’ is, perhaps, ‘established and mature’ from season, ‘to ripen, mature’ (the metaphor of fruit), as in Hamlet, III, iii, 86. One of the main notions of season as defined in the Century Dictionary is ‘to fit for any use by time or habit; habituate; accustom; mature; inure; acclimatise.’ No doubt Sicinius refers primarily to Coriolanus's attitude towards the tribuneship, and it seems in keeping with the Tribune's conceit that he should audaciously apply such a term to his recently-created office. Some take season'd = ‘qualified, tempered’; the force of which I do not see, unless it means that Coriolanus grudges any delegation, however moderate, of the patricians' power to the representatives of the people.—Case (Arden Sh.): The fact that the office of Tribune was not season'd [in the sense given by Johnson] would not hinder Sicinius from so describing it; it is true that by far the majority of the cases in which the

verb season occurs arise unmistakably from the idea of flavouring and the related ideas of preserving and of qualifying or tempering [as given by Schmidt], while the few which are usually put down under ‘mature,’ ‘ripen’ may quite well have the same origin. The strongest case for ‘mature,’ ‘ripen’ is Hamlet, I, iii, 81, where Polonius says, ‘my blessing season this in thee!’ but even here it is possible to regard the blessing as the preservative, or as the ingredient making all palatable. In the same play, III, ii, 219, as ripening or preparing takes time, ‘And who in want a hollow friend doth try Directly seasons him his enemy,’ is better explained by flavours, qualifies; and similarly in III, iii, 86, ‘When he is fit and season'd for his passage,’ there can be no question of maturing and ripening, but only of being tempered and qualified at a particular time by the seasoning of repentance. In Timon, IV, iii, 85, the context, with salt and tubs, the concomitants of pickling, not of ripening, surely fix the metaphor. The N. E. D., however, places the present passage under the figurative use of seasoned in sense, ‘fitted for use, matured, brought to a state of perfection,’ etc.