MESS. It is spoke freely out of many mouths, (How probable, I do not know,) that Marcius, Join'd with Aufidius, leads a power 'gainst Ròme ; And vows revenge as spacious, as between The young'st and oldest thing. SIC. This is most likely ! BRU. Rais'd only, that the weaker sort may wish Good Marcius home again. SIC. MEN. This is unlikely : The very trick on't. He and Aufidius can no more atone®, Than violentest contrariety 9. Enter another Messenger. MESS. You are sent for to the senate; 8 can no more ATONE,] To atone, in the active sense, is to reconcile, and is so used by our author. To atone here, is in the neutral sense, to come to reconciliation. To atone is to unite. JOHNSON. Atone seems to be derived from at and one ;—to reconcile to, or, to be at, union. In some books of Shakspeare's age I have found the phrase in its original form: to reconcile and make them at one." MALONE. 66 The etymology of this verb may be known from the following passage in the second book of Sidney's Arcadia: "Necessitie made us see, that a common enemie sets at one a civil warre." STEEVENS. Hall, in his Satires, uses at onement for reconciled, in a humorous description of a contest between the Back and the Belly of a Fop: 9 rieties. "Ye witlesse gallants, I beshrew your hearts, "Untill the mawes wide mouth be stopt with store." Lib. III. Sat. VII. Boswell. violentest contrariety.] I should read-violentest contra M. MASON. Mr. M. Mason might have supported his conjecture by the following passage in King Lear: "No contraries hold more antipathy "Than I and such a knave." STEEVENS. A fearful army, led by Caius Marcius, Upon our territories; and have already, O'erborne their way, consum'd with fire, and took What lay before them. Enter COMINIUS. COм. O, you have made good work! MEN. What news? what news? COM. You have holp to ravish your own daugh ters, and 1 To melt the city leads 1 upon your pates; To see your wives dishonour'd to your noses ;-MEN. What's the news? what's the news? COM. Your temples burned in their cement; and Your franchises, whereon you stood, confin'd Into an augre's bore 2. MEN. Pray now, your news ?You have made fair work, I fear me :-Pray, your news? If Marcius should be join'd with Volcians, Сом. He is their god; he leads them like a thing ΜΕΝ. If! You have made good work, You, and your apron men; you that stood so much I the city leads] Our author, I believe, was here thinking of the old city gates of London, MALONE. The same phrase has occurred already, in this play. See p. 71. Leads were not peculiar to our city gates. Few ancient houses of consequence were without them. STEEVENS. 66 our fate hid in an augre-hole." STEEVENS. 3 Upon the voice of occupation 3, and Сом. Your Rome about your ears. MEN. 4 He will shake As Hercules Did shake down mellow fruit 5: You have made fair work! BRU. But is this true, sir? Сом. Ay; and you'll look pale 3, Upon the voice of OCCUPATION,] Occupation is here used for mechanicks, men occupied in daily business. So again, in Julius Cæsar, Act 1. Sc. II.: "An I had been a man of any occupation," &c. So, Horace uses artes for artifices: Urit enim fulgore suo, qui prægravat artes Infra se positas. MALONE. In the next page but one, the word crafts is used in the like manner, where Menenius says: 66 you have made fair hands, "You, and your crafts!" M. MASON. The breath of garlick-eaters!] To smell of garlick was once such a brand of vulgarity, that garlick was a food forbidden to an ancient order of Spanish knights, mentioned by Guevara. 66 JOHNSON. So, in Measure for Measure : he would mouth with a beggar, though she smelled brown bread and garlick." Malone. To smell of leeks was no less a mark of vulgarity among the Roman people in the time of Juvenal. Sat. iii. : quis tecum sectile porrum Sutor, et elixi vervecis labra comedit? And from the following passage in Deckar's If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it, 1512, it should appear that garlick was once much used in England, and afterwards as much out of fashion: "Fortune favours nobody but garlick, nor garlick neither now: yet she has strong reason to love it: for though garlick made her smell abominably in the nostrils of the gallants, yet she had smelt and stunk worse for garlick." Hence, perhaps, the cant denomination Pil-garlick for a deserted fellow, a person left to suffer without friends to assist him. STEEVENS. 5 As Hercules, &c.] A ludicrous allusion to the apples of the Hesperides. STEEVENS, Before you find it other. All the regions And perish constant fools. Who is't can blame him? Your enemies, and his, find something in him. MEN. We are all undone, unless The noble man have mercy. Сом. Who shall ask it? The tribunes cannot do't for shame; the people Does of the shepherds: for his best friends, if they even As those should do that had deserv'd his hate, MEN. "Tis true: 8 If he were putting to my house the brand hands, You, and your crafts! you have crafted fair! Сом. You have brought A trembling upon Rome, such as was never So incapable of help. 6 Do SMILINGLY revolt;] Smilingly is the word in the old copy, for which seemingly has been printed in late editions. To revolt smilingly is to revolt with signs of pleasure, or with marks of contempt. STEEVENS. 7 Are ONLY mock'd for VALIANT IGNORANCE,] So, in Troilus and Cressida: "I had rather be a tick in a sheep, than such a valiant ignorance." The adverb-only, was supplied by Sir Thomas Hanmer to complete the verse. STEEVENS. 8 - they charg'd him, &c.] Their charge or injunction would show them insensible of his wrongs, and make them show like enemies. JOHNSON. "They charg'd, and therein show'd," has here the force of 'They would charge, and therein show.' MALONE. TRI. Say not, we brought it. MEN. How! Was it we? We lov'd him; but, like beasts, And cowardly nobles, gave way to your clusters, Сом. MEN. Enter a Troop of Citizens. Here come the clusters. And is Aufidius with him ?-You are they That made the air unwholesome, when you cast Your stinking, greasy caps, in hooting at Coriolanus' exile. Now he's coming; And not a hair upon a soldier's head, Which will not prove a whip; as many coxcombs, We have deserv'd it. CIT. 'Faith, we hear fearful news. 1 CIT. For mine own part, When I said, banish him, I said, 'twas pity. 2 CIT. And so did I. 3 CIT. And so did I; and, to say the truth, so did very many of us: That we did, we did for the 9 And cowardly nobles,] I suspect that our author wrotecoward, which he sometimes uses adjectively. So, in K. John : "Than e'er the coward hand of France can win." STEEVENS. I They'll roar him in again.] As they hooted at his departure, they will roar at his return; as he went out with scoffs, he will come back with lamentations. JOHNSON. |