QUOTES FROM THE BARD

PLAY: Coriolanus ACT/SCENE: 2.1 SPEAKER: CONTEXT: MENENIUS
You know neither me, yourselves nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs: you wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.
BRUTUS
Come, come, you are well understood to be a
perfecter giber for the table than a necessary
bencher in the Capitol. DUTCH: Kom, kom, het is overbekend, dat gij veeleer een onverbeterlijk grappenmaker aan tafel zijt, dan een onontbeerlijk bijzitter op het Kapitool. MORE: Proverb: Know thyself

Ambitious for caps and legs=Wanting people to bow and doff caps
Bencher=member of a court or council
Set up the bloody flag=Declare war on (patience)
Fosset, forset, faucet=Kind of tap for drawing liquor from a barrel; only in “faucet-seller”
Giber=entertainer, (aftr-dinner) jester
Mummer=Someone wearing a mask
The more entangled=To make (the dispute) more confused and intricate
Compleat:
To gibe=Boerten, gekscheeren
Bencher=Een byzitter, Raad, een Rechtsgeleerde van den eersten rang in ‘t Genootschap
Mummer=Een vermomde
Faucet (or peg)=Zwikje, pennetje tot een vat Topics: proverbs and idioms, language, intellect, reputation, judgment, dispute

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