Page 2812 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

MENENIUS

You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor
knaves’ caps and legs. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in [65]
hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a faucetseller, and then rejourn

the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are
hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with
the colic, you make faces like mummers, [70] set up the bloody flag against
all patience, and, in roaring for a chamberpot, dismiss the controversy
bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All the peace you make in

their cause is calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.
[75]

BRUTUS
Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table
than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.

MENENIUS

Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous
subjects as you [80] are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not
worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so
honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher’s cushion or to be entombed in an
ass’s pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying Martius is proud; who, in [85] a

cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessor since Deucalion, though
peradventure some of the best of ’em were hereditary hangmen. Good-e’en
to your worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the

herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I [90] will be bold to take my leave of
you.

Brutus and Sicinius stand aside.
Enter Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria.

How now, my as fair as noble ladies − and the moon, were she earthly, no
nobler − whither do you follow your eyes so fast?

VOLUMNIA
Honourable Menenius, my boy Martius approaches. [95] For the love of Juno,

let’s go.