Page 2847 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

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’! [90]

O good but most unwise patricians! Why,
You grave but reckless Senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer

That with his peremptory ‘shall’, being but
The born and noise o’th’monster’s, wants not spirit [95]
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, [100]
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’, [105]
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 [110]
May enter ’twixt the gap of both and take
The one by th’other.

COMINIUS
Well, on to th’market-place.