From me receive that natural competency me, 1 CIT. Ay, sir; well, well. MEN. Though all at once cannot See what I do deliver out to each; Yet I can make my audit up, that all From me do back receive the flower of all, And leave me but the bran. What say you to't? 1 CIT. It was an answer: How apply you this? MEN. The senators of Rome are this good belly, And you the mutinous members: For examine Their counsels, and their cares; digest things rightly, Touching the weal o'the common; you shall find, 1 CIT. I the great toe? Why the great toe? MEN. For that being one o'the lowest, basest, poorest, Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost: Thou rascal, that art worst in blood, to run Again, in Othello : " Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne." See also a passage in King Henry V. where seat is used in the same sense as here; Vol. XII. p. 310, n. 7. MALONE. 9 - the cranks and offices of man,] Cranks are the mean drous ducts of the human body. STEEVENS. Cranks are windings. So, in Venus and Adonis : "He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles." MALONE. Lead'st first, to win some vantage.1- The one side must have bale. - Hail, noble Mar cius! 4 Thou rascal, that art worst in blood, to run read, by an easy change: Thou rascal, that art worst in blood, to ruin Thou that art the meanest by birth, art the foremost to lead thy fellows to ruin, in hope of some advantage. The meaning, however, is perhaps only this, Thou that art a hound, or running dog of the lowest breed, lead'st the pack, when any thing is to be gotten. JOHNSON. Worst in blood may be the true reading. In King Henry VI. P. I: i. " If we be English deer, be then in blood." e. high spirits, in vigour. Again, in this play of Coriolanus, Act IV. sc. v: "But when they shall see his crest up again, and the man in blood," &c. Mr. M. Mason judiciously observes that blood, in all these passages, is applied to deer, for a lean deer is called a rascal; and that "worst in blood," is least in vigour. STEEVENS. Both rascal and in blood are terms of the forest. Rascal meant a lean deer, and is here used equivocally. The phrase in blood has been proved in a former note to be a phrase of the forest. See Vol. XII. p. 126, n. 7. Our author seldom is careful that his comparisons should answer on both sides. He seems to mean here, thou, worthless scoundrel, though, like a deer not in blood, thou art in the worst condition for running of all the herd of plebeians, takest the lead in this tumult, in order to obtain some private advantage to yourself. What advantage the foremost of a herd of deer could obtain, is not easy to point out, nor did Shakspeare, I believe, consider. Perhaps indeed he only uses rascal in its ordinary So afterwards sense. " From rascals worse than they." Dr. Johnson's interpretation appears to me inadmissible; as the term, though it is applicable both in its original and metaphorical sense to a man, cannot, I think, be applied to a dog; nor have I found any instance of the term in blood being applied to the canine species. MALONE. Enter CAIUS MARCIUS. MAR. Thanks.- What's the matter, you dissen tious rogues, That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs? 1 CIT. We have ever your good word. MAR. He that, will give good words to thee, will flatter Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs, That like nor peace, nor war? the one affrights you, ness, * The one side must have bale.] Bale is an old Saxon word, for misery or calamity: 66 For light she hated as the deadly bale." Spenser's Fairy Queen. Mr. M. Mason observes that "bale, as well as bane, signified poison in Shakspeare's days. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers." STEEVENS. This word was antiquated in Shakspeare's time, being marked as obsolete by Bullokar, in his English Expositor, 1616. MALONE. • That like nor peace, nor war? the one affrights you, The other makes you proud.] Coriolanus does not use these two sentences consequentially, but first reproaches them with unsteadiness, then with their other occasional vices. JOHNSON. To make him worthy, whose offence subdues him, And curse that justice did it.] i. e. Your virtue is to speak Deserves your hate: and your affections are And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye? With every minute you do change a mind; Him vile, that was your garland. What's the mat ter, That in these several places of the city Would feed on one another? What's their seek ing ?5 MEN. For corn at their own rates; whereof, they say, The city is well stor'd. MAR. Hang 'em! They say? They'll sit by the fire, and presume to know What's done i'the Capitol: who's like to rise, Who thrives, and who declines: side factions, and give out Conjectural marriages; making parties strong, And feebling such as stand not in their liking, well of him whom his own offences have subjected to justice; and to rail at those laws by which he whom you praise was punished. STEEVENS. 5 What's their seeking?] Seeking is here used substantively. -The answer is, "Their seeking, or suit, (to use the language of the time,) is for corn." 6 who's like to rise, MALONE. Who thrives, and who declines:] The words who thrives, which destroy the metre, appear to be an evident and tasteless interpolation. They are omitted by Sir T. Hanmer. STEEVENS. Below their cobbled shoes. They say, there's grain enough? Would the nobility lay aside their ruth, 7-their ruth,] i. e. their pity, compassion. Fairfax and Spenser often use the word. Hence the adjective-ruthless, which is still current. STEEVENS. 8 I'd make a quarry With thousands) Why a quarry? I suppose, not because he would pile them square, but because he would give them for carrion to the birds of prey. JOHNSON. So, in The Miracles of Moses, by Drayton : " And like a quarry cast them on the land." See Vol. X. p. 248, n. 4. STEEVENS. The word quarry occurs in Macbeth, where Ross says to Macduff: "- to state the manner, " Were on the quarry of these murder'd deer In a note on this last passage, Steevens asserts, that quarry means game pursued or killed, and supports that opinion by a passage in Massinger's Guardian: and from thence I suppose the word was used to express a heap of slaughtered persons. In the concluding scene of Hamlet, where Fortinbras sees so many lying dead, he says: "This quarry cries, on havock!" : and in the last scene of A Wife for a Month, Valerio, in describing his own fictitious battle with the Turks, says: " I saw the child of honour, for he was young, M. MASON. Bullokar, in his English Expositor, 8vo. 1616, says that "a quarry among hunters signifieth the reward given to hounds after they have hunted, or the venison which is taken by hunting." This sufficiently explains the word of Coriolanus. MALONE. pick my lance.) And so the word [pitch] is still pro |