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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. |
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: |
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! |
Subsets and Splits