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First Citizen: |
We cannot, sir, we are undone already. |
MENENIUS: |
I tell you, friends, most charitable care |
Have the patricians of you. For your wants, |
Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well |
Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them |
Against the Roman state, whose course will on |
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs |
Of more strong link asunder than can ever |
Appear in your impediment. For the dearth, |
The gods, not the patricians, make it, and |
Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack, |
You are transported by calamity |
Thither where more attends you, and you slander |
The helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers, |
When you curse them as enemies. |
First Citizen: |
Care for us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us |
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses |
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to |
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act |
established against the rich, and provide more |
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain |
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and |
there's all the love they bear us. |
MENENIUS: |
Either you must |
Confess yourselves wondrous malicious, |
Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you |
A pretty tale: it may be you have heard it; |
But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture |
To stale 't a little more. |
First Citizen: |
Well, I'll hear it, sir: yet you must not think to |
fob off our disgrace with a tale: but, an 't please |
you, deliver. |
MENENIUS: |
There was a time when all the body's members |
Rebell'd against the belly, thus accused it: |
That only like a gulf it did remain |
I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive, |
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing |
Like labour with the rest, where the other instruments |
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, |
And, mutually participate, did minister |
Unto the appetite and affection common |
Of the whole body. The belly answer'd-- |
First Citizen: |
Well, sir, what answer made the belly? |
MENENIUS: |
Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile, |
Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus-- |
For, look you, I may make the belly smile |
As well as speak--it tauntingly replied |
To the discontented members, the mutinous parts |
That envied his receipt; even so most fitly |
As you malign our senators for that |
They are not such as you. |
First Citizen: |
Your belly's answer? What! |
The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye, |
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, |
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter. |
With other muniments and petty helps |
In this our fabric, if that they-- |
MENENIUS: |
What then? |
'Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? what then? |
First Citizen: |
Should by the cormorant belly be restrain'd, |
Who is the sink o' the body,-- |
MENENIUS: |
Well, what then? |
First Citizen: |
The former agents, if they did complain, |
What could the belly answer? |
MENENIUS: |
I will tell you |
If you'll bestow a small--of what you have little-- |
Patience awhile, you'll hear the belly's answer. |
First Citizen: |
Ye're long about it. |
MENENIUS: |