"His heart's his mouth:
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death."[687]
He rails against the people, the tribunes, ediles, flatterers of the plebs. "Come, enough," says his friend Menenius. "Enough, with over-measure," says Brutus the tribune. He retorts:
"No, take more:
What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
Seal what I end withal!... At once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison."[688]
The tribune cries, Treason! and bids seize him. He cries:
"Hence, old goat!...
Hence, rotten thing! or I shall shake thy bones
Out of thy garments!"[689]
He strikes him, drives the mob off: he fancies himself amongst Volscians. "On fair ground I could beat forty of them!" And when his friends hurry him off, he threatens still, and
"Speak(s) o' the people
As if you (he) were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity."[690]
Yet he bends before his mother, for he has recognized in her a soul as lofty and a courage as intractable as his own. He has submitted from his infancy to the ascendancy of this pride which he admires. Volumnia reminds him: "My praises made thee first a soldier." Without power over himself, continually tossed on the fire of his too hot blood, he has always been the arm, she the thought. He obeys from involuntary respect, like a soldier before his general, but with what effort!
"Coriolanus. The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up
The glances of my sight! a beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees
Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms!—I will not do't....
Volumnia. ... Do as thou list.
Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
But owe thy pride thyself.
Cor. Pray, be content:
Mother, I am going to the market-place;
Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved
Of all the trades in Rome."[691]
He goes, and his friends speak for him. Except a few bitter asides, he appears to be submissive. Then the tribunes pronounce the accusation, and summon him to answer as a traitor: