Coriolanus
Coriolanus is an historical tragedy by William Shakespeare, probably written around 1607-8.
Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it's spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull'd, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.
Enough, with over-measure.
I think he'll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.
The noble sister of Publicola,
The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,
That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple: – dear Valeria!
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you
His absolute shall?
If it be honour in your wars to seem
The same you are not, (which, for your best ends,
You adopt your policy) how is it less or worse,
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honour, as in war, since that to both
It stands in like request?
O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise
Are still together, who twin, as 't were, in love
Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity: so, fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep
To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends
And interjoin their issues. So with me: —
My birthplace hate I, and my love's upon
This enemy town. — I'll enter: if he slay me,
He does fair justice; if he give me way,
I'll do his country service.
Had I a dozen sons, — each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, — I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.
If you have writ your annals true, ’t is there
That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli:
Alone I did it! Boy!
God-den to your worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians.
His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for’s power to thunder.
Faith, there have been many great men that have flatter'd the people, who ne'er loved them.
But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic;
And manhood is call'd foolery, when it stands
Against a falling fabric.
Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself,
And so shall starve with feeding.
One that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in ’t.
I thank you for your voices, — thank you, —
Your most sweet voices.