I am weary; yea, my memory is tired.
Have we no wine here?
(i. ix. 79.)
The postponement of pity to wrath is a new characteristic detail which shows how these gentler impulses in Coriolanus must yield to his ruling passions. On the other hand his host is transformed from a rich to a poor man, and thus his humanity acquires a wider range, and we see how it can extend beyond his own class if only there is a personal claim on it. Above all there is the new illuminating touch of the lapse of memory. Sometimes this has been taken as betraying the indifference of the aristocrat for an inferior whose name he does not think it worth while to remember. Surely not. Coriolanus is experiencing the collapse that follows his superhuman exertions, the exhaustion of body and mind when one cannot think of the most familiar words: but he rallies his strength for a last effort, and is just able to intercede for his humble guest-friend ere he succumbs.
And this last passage brings before us another of his magnanimous qualities. He has refused most princely gifts. No one can accuse him of covetousness. His patrician bigotry aims at power and leadership, not at material perquisites. After the double battle, won almost entirely by his instrumentality, when Cominius offers him the tenth, he makes the generous answer:
I thank you, general;
But cannot make my heart consent to take
A bribe to pay my sword: I do refuse it.
(i. ix. 36.)
He deserves the encomium of the consul: