QUOTES FROM THE BARD

PLAY: Coriolanus ACT/SCENE: 1.1 SPEAKER: First Citizen CONTEXT: 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. DUTCH: Als de oorlog ons niet opeet, dan doen zij het; en dat is al hunne liefde jegens ons. MORE: Piercing statutes=Biting laws (See Measure for Measure, 1.3)
True indeed=Ironical
Edicts for usury=Laws, decrees for money-lending
Wholesome=Suitable, beneficial
Eat us up=To devour, to consume, to waste, to destroy
Suffer=To bear, to allow, to let, not to hinder
Compleat:
To pierce=Doorbooren, doordringen
Edict=Een gebod, bevel, afkondiging
Wholesom=Gezond, heylzaam, heelzaam
Eat up=Opeeten, vernielen
Suffer=Toelaten Topics: poverty and wealth, order/society, punishment, equality