(I. i. 209.)
In reference to this Archbishop Trench has a very true remark. He points out that where there is a marked and conscious division of ranks,
[proverbs] may go nearly or quite out of use among the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, “ever uses a proverb.” And with how true a touch of nature, Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who with all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy with the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn of their proverbs and of their frequent employment of them.
He has indeed no sense of their homely wisdom or their homely virtues. He has no common charity for them, and his attitude to them if they venture to assert themselves, is that of a less human slaveholder to refractory slaves.
Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,
And let me use my sword, I’ld make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter’d slaves, as high
As I could pick my lance.
(i. i. 201.)
After such counsel, we feel that the exclamation of Sicinius is not without its warrant: