Page:Coriolanus (1924) Yale.djvu/168

156 we have declared in his life. His sister Valeria was greatly honoured and reverenced among all the Romans; and did so modestly and wisely behave herself, that she did not shame nor dishonour the house she came of.'

To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air. The allusion is doubtless to the common indication of the winds (north, south, etc.) in old maps as issuing from cherubs' swollen cheeks. In Richard II, III. iii. 55–57, Shakespeare speaks of

'the elements

Of fire and water, when their thundering shock

At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.'

And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak. And yet, with all your terrible show, to commit no inhumanity.

talks like a knell, and his 'hum!' is a battery. His conversation bodes death, and his exclamation of impatience is like the sound of cannon.

Ne'er through an arch so hurried the blown tide. The allusion is to the rush of the incoming tide through the old London bridge, which consisted of twenty arches. The same figure is found in Lucrece, ll. 1667–1671:

As through an arch the violent roaring tide

Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,

Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride

Back to the strait that fore'd him on so fast;

In rage sent out, recall'd in rage, being past.'

Make the sun dance. An old popular belief was that the sun danced for joy on Easter morning. It is alluded to by many writers of Shakespeare's time.

Some editors make a new scene of the next six lines.

Corioli. The text of this scene is