All.

Hector!-the gods forbid ! Tro. He's dead; and at the murderer's horse's tail,

In beastly sort, dragg'd through the shameful field.

Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!
Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy !79
I say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy,
And linger not our sure destructions on!

Ene. My lord, you do discomfort all the host.
Tro. You understand me not that tell me so :

I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death;
But dare all imminence that gods and men
Address their dangers in. Hector is gone:
Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba ?
Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call'd,
Go in to Troy, and say there, Hector's dead:
There is a word will Priam turn to stone;
Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,
Cold statues of the youth; and, in a word,
Scare Troy out of itself. But, march away:
Hector is dead; there is no more to say.
Stay yet. You vile abominable tents,
Thus proudly pight 80 upon our Phrygian plains,
Let Titan rise as early as he dare,

79. And smile at Troy. Hanmer changed "smile" to 'smite;' but it is probable that here "smile" is intended to bear the sense of 'smile derisively,' 'smile in derision.'

80. Pight. An old form of 'pitched ;' 'fixed.'

81. Thou great-siz'd coward. This is said as an apostrophe to the absent Achilles.

82. Hence, broker lackey! Here "broker," as a term of opprobrium (see Note 84, Act ii., "King John"), is used adjectively.

83. Ignomy. An abbreviated form of 'ignominy.' See Note 48, Act v., "First Part Henry IV." In the Folio this couplet occurs verbatim at the conclusion of sc. 3 of the present Act, and is repeated here; a circumstance which confirms our belief that the closing scenes and existing end are not Shakespeare's own. It may be that he concluded the play there. It is possible that the final arrangement which he made may not have been considered to form an effective stage catastrophe, and he may have permitted the brief scenes descriptive of the various engagements on the battle-field to be subjoined from some earlier drama, or they may have been added by some other hand at the instigation of the players, or even may have been introduced by the actors themselves That this was by no means an unusual practice-especially in comic scenes, and where the fool-jesters had to speak-we have evidence in Shakespeare's own words, "Hamlet," Act iii., sc. 2, when the prince, in his address to the players, says, “And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them." There is to our minds strong evidence of there having been what, in theatrical parlance, is called "gag" introduced

Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name! [Exit.

Pan. A goodly medicine for my aching bones!— Oh, world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! Why should our endeavour be so loved, and the performance so loathed ? what verse for it? what instance for it ?-Let me see :—

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;
And being once subdu'd in armèd tail,
Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.

[Exit.

into the close of this play; and probably both those who produced the surreptitiously-procured Quarto copies and the playereditors of the Folio copy judged it well to preserve in print that which they thought humorous, and that which had brought popular plaudits when uttered on the stage. Farther testimony of the truth of this idea we think is contained in a few coarse and ribald lines which complete Pandarus's last speech in the Folio (called in theatrical jargon "a tag" to the play); and which, consistently with the system of our present edition, and with our belief that they are not Shakespeare's, but the comedian's who enacted the part of Pandarus, are here omitted. In closing our annotations upon this fine play, however, we cannot take leave of it without stating that we have been the rather free in expressing our dislike of its final scenes and our conviction that they are not Shakespeare's, because we think they are unworthy to come after that which has so magnificently preceded them, as the eloquent wisdom of Ulysses, the classical and romantic colouring of the whole dramatic picture, and the admirable moral characterisation depicted with subtlest touches. Those who most gratefully recognise Shakespeare's power of delineating the glories, beauties, and delicacies of woman's character, will the most readily avow the mastery with which he has depicted its foibles, meannesses, and crassitudes in the wretched Cressida. As Shakespeare's Imogen, Portia, Rosalind, Miranda, and their sisterhood are triumphant types of woman's excellence, charm, and innocence, commanding all women's gratitude and emulation, so does Shakespeare's Cressida form a type of woman's weakness, despicableness, and degradation, affording all women an affecting and salutary monition.

SCENE I.-ROME. A street.

First Cit. We are accounted poor citizens; the

relieve us if they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess they

Citizens. Speak, speak.

dear: the leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is an inventory to particularise their

Citizens. Resolved, resolved.

Citizens. We know 't, we know 't.

First Cit. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is 't a verdict?

Citizens. No more talking on't; let it be done: away, away!

Sec. Cit. One word, good citizens.

1. The first known printed copy of "The Tragedy of Coriolanus" is the one in the 1623 Folio; and on the 8th of November in that year it was entered on the Registers of the Stationers' Company by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio, as one of the copies "not formerly entered to other men." There is no existing evidence to denote the period of its composition or of its first production on the stage; but indications derivable from its style show it to have been among the later-written plays of Shakespeare. There are certain elisional contractions used by him especially at one epoch of his writing, that appear in this play, and bear similitude to those appearing in "The Winter's Tale" and "Henry VIII.;" there is also much of the same strikingly condensed constructional form and elliptical diction to be traced; while the mature tone of thought is entirely that of his latter works. A verbal resemblance between his mode of relating the fable-story told by Menenius in the first scene of the play, and Camden's mode of giving the same story in his "Remains," published in 1605, makes it probable that the dramatist had seen Camden's version; although this fable-story is likewise recounted in North's "Plutarch's Lives," whence Shakespeare derived the main groundwork for the structure of the present drama. The peculiar skill with which he adopted passages from the historian's pages (to which we adverted in our opening Note of "Richard II."), transferring

Sec. Cit. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?

First Cit. Against him first: he's a very dog to the commonalty.

Sec. Cit.

Consider you what services he has done for his country?

First Cit. Very well; and could be content to

them with almost literal exactness, yet at the same time investing them with all the dignity and beauty of versification, is magnificently visible here. He takes the already noble prose of Sir Thomas North (translated from Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre's French rendering of Choronean Plutarch) and exalts it into the very sublime of poetic history. The two grand speeches, for instance, of Coriolanus to Tullus Aufidius in Act iv., commencing, 'My name is Caius Marcius," and of Volumnia to her son in Act v., beginning, "Should we be silent and not speak," are given almost word for word as recorded in North's "Plutarch; yet so superbly are they set to the music of harmonious numbers that they read with all the freedom of primal invention.

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2. The patricians, good. "Good" is here used in the sense which it bears as a commercial term, signifying of good credit,' 'of substantial possession.' See Note 56, Act i., "Merchant of Venice."

3. Too dear. Too costly to maintain.'

4. The object of our misery. 'The spectacle of our misery;" "object" is here used to express that which is beheld, the object of sight.

5. Ere we become rakes. 'As lean as a rake' is an old proverbial simile; and is used by both Chaucer and Spenser. 6. Against him first. This speech has the prefix of 'All' in the Folio. Malone suggested the correction.