Page 2774 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

FIRST CITIZEN

We cannot, sir, we are undone already.

MENENIUS
I tell you, friends, most charitable care
Have the patricians of you. For your wants,
Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well [65]

Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them
Against the Roman state, whose course will on
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder than can ever

Appear in your impediment. For the dearth, [70]
The gods, not the patricians, make it, and
Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,
You are transported by calamity

Thither where more attends you, and you slander
The helms o’th’state, who care for you like fathers, [75]
When you curse them as enemies.

FIRST CITIZEN
Care for us? True indeed! They ne’er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and
their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support

usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established [80] against the rich,
and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If
the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us.

MENENIUS
Either you must [85]

Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,
Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you
A pretty tale. It may be you have heard it,
But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture

To stale’t a little more. [90]

FIRST CITIZEN

Well, I’ll hear it, sir. Yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale.
But, an’t
please you, deliver.