Page:Coriolanus (1924) Yale.djvu/140

128

Are suitors to you.

Cor. I beseech you, peace:

Or, if you'd ask, remember this before:

The things I have forsworn to grant may never

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

To allay my rages and revenges with

Your colder reasons.

Vol. O! no more, no more;

You have said you will not grant us anything;

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

May hang upon your hardness. Therefore, hear us.

Cor. Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark; for we'll

Hear nought from Rome in private. Your request?

Vol. Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment

And state of bodies would bewray what life

We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself

How more unfortunate than all living women

Are we come hither: since that thy sight, which should

Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,

Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow;

Making the mother, wife, and child to see

The son, the husband, and the father tearing

His country's bowels out. And to poor we

Thine enmity's most capital: thou barr'st us

Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort

That all but we enjoy; for how can we,

 82 capitulate: make terms

90 fail in: disappoint us in

95 state of bodies: physical health

bewray: disclose

103 we: us

104 capital: fatal

