BRUTUS.
You speak o’ th’ people
As if you were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity.
SICINIUS.
’Twere well
We let the people know’t.
MENENIUS.
What, what? His choler?
CORIOLANUS.
Choler?
Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
By Jove, ’twould be my mind.
SICINIUS.
It is a mind
That shall remain a poison where it is,
Not poison any further.
CORIOLANUS.
“Shall remain”?
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you
His absolute “shall”?
COMINIUS.
’Twas from the canon.
CORIOLANUS.
“Shall”?
O good but most unwise patricians, why,
You grave but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra leave to choose an officer,
That with his peremptory “shall,” being but
The horn and noise o’ th’ monster’s, wants not spirit
To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch
And make your channel his? If he have power,
Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned,
Be not as common fools; if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators; and they are no less
When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate,
And such a one as he, who puts his “shall,”
His popular “shall,” against a graver bench
Than ever frowned in Greece. By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base! And my soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter ’twixt the gap of both and take
The one by th’ other.
COMINIUS.
Well, on to th’ marketplace.
CORIOLANUS.
Whoever gave that counsel to give forth
The corn o’ th’ storehouse gratis, as ’twas used
Sometime in Greece—