Page 2922 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

VOLUMNIA

Your knee, sirrah. [75]

CORIOLANUS
That’s my brave boy!

VOLUMNIA
Even he, your wife, this lady, and myself
Are suitors to you.

CORIOLANUS
I beseech you, peace!

Or, if you’d ask, remember this before:
The thing I have forsworn to grant may never [80]
Be held by you denials. Do not bid me
Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate

Again with Rome’s mechanics. Tell me not
Wherein I seem unnatural. Desire not
T’allay my rages and revenges with [85]
Your colder reasons.

VOLUMNIA

O, no more, no more!
You have said you will not grant us any thing −
For we have nothing else to ask but that
Which you deny already. Yet we will ask,
That, if you fail in our request, the blame [90]

May hang upon your hardness. Therefore hear us.

CORIOLANUS
Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark; for we’ll
Hear naught from Rome in private. (He sits) Your request?

VOLUMNIA
Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment

And state of bodies would bewray what life [95]
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself