MENENIUS.
Pray you, who does the wolf love?
SICINIUS.
The lamb.
MENENIUS.
Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Martius.
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 Martius 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’ th’ 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 Martius 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
infantlike 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account