Second Cit. Your own desert?
Cor. Ay, not Mine own desire.
[His own desert has brought him to the consulship; his own desire would have omitted the conciliation of the people, and the deference to their will, that with all his desert somehow he seems to find expected from him.]
First Cit. How! not your own desire!
Cor. No, Sir. 'Twas never my desire yet, To trouble the poor with begging.
He desires what the poor have to give him however; but he desires to take it, without begging. But it is the heart of the true hero that speaks in earnest through that mockery, and the reference is to a state of things towards which the whole criticism of the play is steadfastly pointed, a state in which sovereigns were reluctantly compelled to beg from the poor, what they would rather have taken without their leave, or, at least, a state in which the form of this begging was still maintained, though there lacked but little to make it a form only, a state of things in which a country gentleman might be called on to sell 'his brass pans' without being supplied, on the part of the State, with what might appear, to him, any respectable reason for it, putting his life in peril, and coming off, with a hair's-breadth escape, of all his future usefulness, if he were bold enough to question the proceeding; a state of things in which a poor law-reader might feel himself called upon to buy a gown for a lady, whose gowns were none of the cheapest, at a time when the state of his finances might render it extremely inconvenient to do so.
But to return to the Roman citizen, for the play is written by one who knows that the human nature is what it is in all ages, or, at least, until it is improved with better arts of culture than the world has yet tried on it.
First Cit. You must think, if we give you anything, We hope to gain by you.
Cor. Well then, I pray, YOUR PRICE O'THE CONSULSHIP?
First Cit. The price is, Sir, to ask it kindly.