Page:Coriolanus (1924) Yale.djvu/171

The Tragedy of Coriolanus and members did labour painfully, and were very careful to satisfy the appetites and desires of the body. And so the belly, all this notwithstanding, laughed at their folly, and said: "It is true, I first receive all meats that nourish man's body: but afterwards I send it again to the nourishment of other parts of the same." "Even so" (quoth he) "O you, my masters, and citizens of Rome: the reason is a like between the Senate and you. For matters being well digested, and their counsels thoroughly examined, touching the benefit of the commonwealth, the Senators are cause of the common commodity that cometh unto every one of you." These persuasions pacified the people.'

The most famous declamatory passages in Coriolanus are precisely those in which Shakespeare has most closely reproduced the prose of North. They are Coriolanus' indictment of the mob (III. i. 63–188), his speech to Aufidius in the latter's house at Antium (IV. v. 71–107), and Volumnia's successful appeal for Rome (V. iii. 94 ff.). These are the emotional crises of the play. They are singular examples of the tact with which at this period of his career Shakespeare could transfer a fine and living picture from narrative to drama and from prose to poetry with the maximum of fidelity and an irreducible minimum of remoulding. North thus reports the speeches of Coriolanus and Aufidius:

'Tullus rose presently from the board, and, coming towards him, asked him what he was, and wherefore he came. Then Martius unmuffled himself, and after he had paused a while, making no answer, he said unto him. "If thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and, seeing me, dost not perhaps believe me to be the man I am in deed, I must of necessity bewray my self to be that I am. I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thy self particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, great