ACT II.

       SCENE I. Rome. A public place

       [Enter MENENIUS, SICINIUS, and BRUTUS.]

       MENENIUS.

       The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight.

       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 baas 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 TRIBUNES.

       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 TRIBUNES.

       Why, how are we censured?

       MENENIUS.

       Because you talk of pride now,—will you not be angry?

       BOTH TRIBUNES.

       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!

       BOTH TRIBUNES.

       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 cannot 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 have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm 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 anything. 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 threepence 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 all your 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 retire.]

       [Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, VALERIA, &c.]

       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; I saw it.

       MENENIUS. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years’ health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician: the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he not wounded? he was wont to come home wounded.

       VIRGILIA.

       O, no, no, no.

       VOLUMNIA.

       O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for’t.

       MENENIUS.