A public place. Enter MENENIUS with the two Tribunes of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS. MENENIUS The augurer tells me we shall have news to-night. BRUTUS Good or bad? MENENIUS Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius. SICINIUS Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. MENENIUS Pray you, who does the wolf love? SICINIUS The lamb. MENENIUS Ay, to devour him; as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius. BRUTUS He's a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear. MENENIUS He's a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men: tell me one thing that I shall ask you. Both Well, sir. MENENIUS In what enormity is Marcius poor in, that you two have not in abundance? BRUTUS He's poor in no one fault, but stored with all. SICINIUS Especially in pride. BRUTUS And topping all others in boasting. MENENIUS This is strange now: do you two know how you are censured here in the city, I mean of us o' the right-hand file? do you? Both Why, how are we censured? MENENIUS Because you talk of pride now,--will you not be angry? Both Well, well, sir, well. MENENIUS Why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience: give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures; at the least if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame Marcius for being proud? BRUTUS We do it not alone, sir. MENENIUS I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves!
O that you could! BRUTUS What then, sir? MENENIUS Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome. SICINIUS Menenius, you are known well enough too. MENENIUS I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning: what I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are--I cannot call you Lycurguses--if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I can't say your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables: and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? what barm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? BRUTUS Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. MENENIUS You know neither me, yourselves nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs: you wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones. BRUTUS Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. MENENIUS Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are.
When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud; who in a cheap estimation, is worth predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen. God-den to your worships: more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians: I will be bold to take my leave of you.
BRUTUS and SICINIUS go aside Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and VALERIA How now, my as fair as noble ladies,--and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler,--whither do you follow your eyes so fast? VOLUMNIA Honourable Menenius, my boy Marcius approaches; for the love of Juno, let's go. MENENIUS Ha! Marcius coming home! VOLUMNIA Ay, worthy Menenius; and with most prosperous approbation. MENENIUS Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee.
Hoo!
Marcius coming home! VOLUMNIA VIRGILIA Nay,'tis true. VOLUMNIA Look, here's a letter from him: the state hath another, his wife another; and, I think, there's one at home for you. MENENIUS I will make my very house reel tonight: a letter for me! VIRGILIA Yes, certain, there's a letter for you;
