Did you perceive
He did solicit you in free contempt
When he did need your loves, and do you think
That his contempt shall not be bruising to you,
When he hath power to crush?
(II. iii. 207.)
All these instances of right feeling and instinctive appreciation of greatness are in Shakespeare’s picture, while they are either not at all or in a much less degree in Plutarch’s. And these citizens are capable of following good leadership as well as bad. They listen to Menenius, and are “almost persuaded” by his argument, without, as in Plutarch, making their acceptance of it merely provisional. Under Cominius they quit themselves, as he says, “like Romans,” and he gives them the praise:
Breathe you, my friends: well fought.
(I. vi. 1.)
Afterwards too he recognises that they are earning their share of the spoil, even as before they had borne themselves stoutly: