Act 5, Scene 3

The tent of CORIOLANUS.

[Enter CORIOLANUS, AUFIDIUS, and others.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3163 We will before the walls of Rome to-morrow
3164 Set down our host.—My partner in this action,
3165 You must report to the Volscian lords how plainly
3166 I have borne this business.
Tullus Aufidius
3167 Only their ends
3168 You have respected; stopped your ears against
3169 The general suit of Rome; never admitted
3170 A private whisper, no, not with such friends
3171 That thought them sure of you.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3172 This last old man,
3173 Whom with crack'd heart I have sent to Rome,
3174 Lov'd me above the measure of a father;
3175 Nay, godded me indeed. Their latest refuge
3176 Was to send him; for whose old love I have,—
3177 Though I show'd sourly to him,—once more offer'd
3178 The first conditions, which they did refuse,
3179 And cannot now accept, to grace him only,
3180 That thought he could do more, a very little
3181 I have yielded to: fresh embassies and suits,
3182 Nor from the state nor private friends, hereafter
3183 Will I lend ear to.—
[Shout within.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3184 Ha! what shout is this?
3185 Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow
3186 In the same time 'tis made? I will not.
[Enter, in mourning habits, VIRGILIA, VOLUMNIA, leading YOUNG MARCIUS, VALERIA, and attendants.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3187 My wife comes foremost; then the honour'd mould
3188 Wherein this trunk was fram'd, and in her hand
3189 The grandchild to her blood. But, out, affection!
3190 All bond and privilege of nature, break!
3191 Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.—
3192 What is that curt'sy worth? or those doves' eyes,
3193 Which can make gods forsworn?—I melt, and am not
3194 Of stronger earth than others.—My mother bows,
3195 As if Olympus to a molehill should
3196 In supplication nod: and my young boy
3197 Hath an aspect of intercession which
3198 Great nature cries "Deny not.'—Let the Volsces
3199 Plough Rome and harrow Italy: I'll never
3200 Be such a gosling to obey instinct; but stand,
3201 As if a man were author of himself,
3202 And knew no other kin.
Virgilia
3203 My lord and husband!
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3204 These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.
Virgilia
3205 The sorrow that delivers us thus chang'd
3206 Makes you think so.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3207 Like a dull actor now,
3208 I have forgot my part and I am out,
3209 Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,
3210 Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,
3211 For that, 'Forgive our Romans.'—O, a kiss
3212 Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge;
3213 Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
3214 I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
3215 Hath virgin'd it e'er since.—You gods! I prate,
3216 And the most noble mother of the world
3217 Leave unsaluted: sink, my knee, i' the earth;
[Kneels.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3218 Of thy deep duty more impression show
3219 Than that of common sons.
Volumnia
3220 O, stand up bless'd!
3221 Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint,
3222 I kneel before thee; and unproperly
3223 Show duty, as mistaken all this while
3224 Between the child and parent.
[Kneels.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3225 What is this?
3226 Your knees to me? to your corrected son?
3227 Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach
3228 Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds
3229 Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun,;
3230 Murdering impossibility, to make
3231 What cannot be, slight work.
Volumnia
3232 Thou art my warrior;
3233 I holp to frame thee. Do you know this lady?
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3234 The noble sister of Publicola,
3235 The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle
3236 That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
3237 And hangs on Dian's temple:—dear Valeria!
Volumnia
3238 This is a poor epitome of yours,
3239 Which, by the interpretation of full time,
3240 May show like all yourself.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3241 The god of soldiers,
3242 With the consent of supreme Jove, inform
3243 Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou mayst prove
3244 To shame unvulnerable, and stick i' the wars
3245 Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
3246 And saving those that eye thee!
Volumnia
3247 Your knee, sirrah.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3248 That's my brave boy.
Volumnia
3249 Even he, your wife, this lady, and myself,
3250 Are suitors to you.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3251 I beseech you, peace:
3252 Or, if you'd ask, remember this before,—
3253 The thing I have forsworn to grant may never
3254 Be held by you denials. Do not bid me
3255 Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate
3256 Again with Rome's mechanics.—Tell me not
3257 Wherein I seem unnatural: desire not
3258 To allay my rages and revenges with
3259 Your colder reasons.
Volumnia
3260 O, no more, no more!
3261 You have said you will not grant us anything;
3262 For we have nothing else to ask but that
3263 Which you deny already: yet we will ask;
3264 That, if you fail in our request, the blame
3265 May hang upon your hardness; therefore hear us.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3266 Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark: for we'll
3267 Hear nought from Rome in private.—Your request?
Volumnia
3268 Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
3269 And state of bodies would bewray what life
3270 We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself,
3271 How more unfortunate than all living women
3272 Are we come hither: since that thy sight, which should
3273 Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,
3274 Constrains them weep, and shake with fear and sorrow;
3275 Making the mother, wife, and child, to see
3276 The son, the husband, and the father, tearing
3277 His country's bowels out. And to poor we,
3278 Thine enmity's most capital: thou barr'st us
3279 Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort
3280 That all but we enjoy; for how can we,
3281 Alas, how can we for our country pray,
3282 Whereto we are bound,—together with thy victory,
3283 Whereto we are bound? alack, or we must lose
3284 The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,
3285 Our comfort in the country. We must find
3286 An evident calamity, though we had
3287 Our wish, which side should win; for either thou
3288 Must, as a foreign recreant, be led
3289 With manacles through our streets, or else
3290 Triumphantly tread on thy country's ruin,
3291 And bear the palm for having bravely shed
3292 Thy wife and children's blood. For myself, son,
3293 I purpose not to wait on fortune till
3294 These wars determine: if I can not persuade thee
3295 Rather to show a noble grace to both parts
3296 Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner
3297 March to assault thy country than to tread,—
3298 Trust to't, thou shalt not,—on thy mother's womb
3299 That brought thee to this world.
Virgilia
3300 Ay, and mine,
3301 That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name
3302 Living to time.
Young Marcius
3303 'A shall not tread on me;
3304 I'll run away till I am bigger; but then I'll fight.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3305 Not of a woman's tenderness to be,
3306 Requires nor child nor woman's face to see.
3307 I have sat too long.
[Rising.]
Volumnia
3308 Nay, go not from us thus.
3309 If it were so that our request did tend
3310 To save the Romans, thereby to destroy
3311 The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us,
3312 As poisonous of your honour: no; our suit
3313 Is that you reconcile them: while the Volsces
3314 May say 'This mercy we have show'd,' the Romans
3315 'This we receiv'd,' and each in either side
3316 Give the all-hail to thee, and cry, 'Be bless'd
3317 For making up this peace!' Thou know'st, great son,
3318 The end of war's uncertain; but this certain,
3319 That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit
3320 Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name
3321 Whose repetition will be dogg'd with curses;
3322 Whose chronicle thus writ:—'The man was noble,
3323 But with his last attempt he wip'd it out;
3324 Destroy'd his country, and his name remains
3325 To the ensuing age abhorr'd.' Speak to me, son:
3326 Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour,
3327 To imitate the graces of the gods,
3328 To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
3329 And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
3330 That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?
3331 Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
3332 Still to remember wrongs?—Daughter, speak you:
3333 He cares not for your weeping.—Speak thou, boy:
3334 Perhaps thy childishness will move him more
3335 Than can our reasons.—There's no man in the world
3336 More bound to's mother; yet here he lets me prate
3337 Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life
3338 Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy;
3339 When she,—poor hen,—fond of no second brood,
3340 Has cluck'd thee to the wars, and safely home,
3341 Loaden with honour. Say my request's unjust,
3342 And spurn me back: but if it be not so,
3343 Thou art not honest; and the gods will plague thee,
3344 That thou restrain'st from me the duty which
3345 To a mother's part belongs.—He turns away:
3346 Down, ladies: let us shame him with our knees.
3347 To his surname Coriolanus 'longs more pride
3348 Than pity to our prayers. Down: an end;
3349 This is the last.—So we will home to Rome,
3350 And die among our neighbours.—Nay, behold's:
3351 This boy, that cannot tell what he would have
3352 But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship,
3353 Does reason our petition with more strength
3354 Than thou hast to deny't.—Come, let us go:
3355 This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;
3356 His wife is in Corioli, and his child
3357 Like him by chance.—Yet give us our despatch:
3358 I am hush'd until our city be afire,
3359 And then I'll speak a little.
[After holding VOLUMNIA by the hands, in silence.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3360 O mother, mother!
3361 What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,
3362 The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
3363 They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!
3364 You have won a happy victory to Rome;
3365 But for your son,—believe it, O, believe it,
3366 Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd,
3367 If not most mortal to him. But let it come.—
3368 Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars,
3369 I'll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius,
3370 Were you in my stead, would you have heard
3371 A mother less? or granted less, Aufidius?
Tullus Aufidius
3372 I was mov'd withal.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3373 I dare be sworn you were:
3374 And, sir, it is no little thing to make
3375 Mine eyes to sweat compassion. But, good sir,
3376 What peace you'll make, advise me: for my part,
3377 I'll not to Rome, I'll back with you; and, pray you
3378 Stand to me in this cause.—O mother! wife!
[Aside.]
Tullus Aufidius
3379 I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour
3380 At difference in thee; out of that I'll work
3381 Myself a former fortune.
[The Ladies make signs to CORIOLANUS.]
[To VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, &c.]
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
3382 Ay, by and by;
3383 But we'll drink together; and you shall bear
3384 A better witness back than words, which we,
3385 On like conditions, will have counter-seal'd.
3386 Come, enter with us. Ladies, you deserve
3387 To have a temple built you: all the swords
3388 In Italy, and her confederate arms,
3389 Could not have made this peace.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 3175archaic vocab
“Nay, godded me indeed”
'Godded' is a coinage meaning 'made a god of,' 'worshipped as divine.' Coriolanus says Menenius loved him so excessively that the old man treated him as a deity rather than a man. The word appears nowhere else in Shakespeare.
TLN 3187archaic vocab
“the honour'd mould Wherein this trunk was fram'd”
'Mould' here means the shape or form in which something is cast — Coriolanus calls Volumnia the honoured clay in which his body ('this trunk') was formed. 'Trunk' means the body as a physical container, as opposed to the soul. The image is of a man shaped by his mother's body the way a statue is shaped by its mould.
TLN 3192classical allusion
“those doves' eyes, Which can make gods forsworn”
Doves were sacred to Venus, the goddess of love, and the image of a woman's gentle eyes dissolving even the gods' oaths is a classical commonplace. To be 'forsworn' is to break a solemn oath. Coriolanus is saying that Virgilia's tender gaze has the power to unmake his vow not to hear Rome's petition — a power so great it could make even immortal gods perjure themselves.
TLN 3195classical allusion
“As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod”
Olympus was the mountain in northern Greece where the gods were said to live — the highest place in the Greek world. For Volumnia, the most formidable woman Coriolanus knows, to bow before him is as absurd as a divine mountain stooping to a molehill. The image measures the reversal of natural order when a son receives deference from the mother who made him.
TLN 3200archaic vocab
“Be such a gosling to obey instinct; but stand, As if a man were author of himself”
A 'gosling' is a young goose — a creature that follows its mother instinctively with no will of its own. Coriolanus is furiously resisting the pull of family feeling by calling it mere animal instinct: a gosling follows its parent because it cannot help it, not from reason. He wants to stand 'as if a man were author of himself' — self-created, owing nothing to parent or nature.
TLN 3207rhetorical device
“Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part and I am out”
Coriolanus compares himself to a bad actor who has gone 'out' — lost his lines on stage — and stands humiliated in front of the audience. 'Out' was the technical word for an actor who had forgotten his part. The irony is sharp: the man who despises performance, who refused to 'perform' the consulship ritual, now confesses that genuine emotion has robbed him of all self-command.
TLN 3213classical allusion
“by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee”
The 'jealous queen of heaven' is Juno, Roman queen of the gods and goddess of marriage — 'jealous' because she was famously vigilant in guarding the fidelity of marriage bonds, and quick to punish those who violated them. Coriolanus swears by her as the goddess most apt to witness the fidelity of a husband's parting kiss, kept pure through years of exile.
classical Juno, queen of the gods
TLN 3227rhetorical device
“let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun”
Coriolanus piles up three images of things that cannot happen: beach pebbles flicking ('filliping') the stars, winds driving trees into the sun. 'Fillip' means to strike with a flick of the finger. All three images describe the same idea — if his mother bowing to him made sense, then impossible things would have to be true. This is the rhetorical figure of adynaton, piling up impossibilities to say 'never.'
TLN 3241classical allusion
“The god of soldiers, With the consent of supreme Jove, inform Thy thoughts with nobleness”
The 'god of soldiers' is Mars, the Roman god of war and patron deity of warriors. 'Supreme Jove' is Jupiter, king of the gods, whose consent is required before even Mars can act. Coriolanus blesses his young son in the language of a soldier, praying that the war gods will 'inform' (fill, breathe into) the boy's mind with nobleness — a military, god-given virtue rather than a domestic one.
TLN 3255archaic vocab
“capitulate Again with Rome's mechanics”
'Capitulate' here means to negotiate or to treat with (someone) under articles — it does not mean to surrender; it means to come to terms by drawing up conditions chapter by chapter (from Latin 'caput,' a chapter or heading). 'Mechanics' means manual workers, craftsmen, the labouring class. Coriolanus refuses to negotiate again with Rome's working people — the very citizens whose 'voices' he could not bring himself to beg for the consulship.
TLN 3268archaic vocab
“our raiment And state of bodies would bewray what life We have led”
'Bewray' means to reveal or betray (a secret or hidden truth), usually without the subject intending to. Volumnia says that even if she said nothing, her mourning clothes and her worn, grief-aged body would involuntarily disclose the suffering they have lived through since Coriolanus's exile. The word is archaic even in Shakespeare's day, already being replaced by 'betray.'
TLN 3276rhetorical device
“The son, the husband, and the father, tearing His country's bowels out”
'Bowels' in Elizabethan usage meant the inward parts, but also — by extension — the deepest seat of feeling or pity (as in 'bowels of mercy'). Here Volumnia uses it to mean Rome's vitals: Coriolanus is tearing out the entrails of his own homeland. The image fuses bodily dismemberment with the destruction of the political body, making the attack on Rome literal infanticide carried out by the city's own son.
historical The Fable of the Belly and the Members
TLN 3288archaic vocab
“as a foreign recreant, be led With manacles through our streets”
A 'recreant' was a coward, a traitor, or one who had abandoned his faith or allegiance — from Old French 'recroire,' to surrender one's cause. Volumnia presses the logic of his choice: if Coriolanus's Volscian army loses, he will be paraded as a defeated enemy through Roman streets in chains ('manacles' are metal handcuffs or shackles). Either outcome of the battle destroys him.
TLN 3291classical allusion
“bear the palm for having bravely shed Thy wife and children's blood”
The palm branch was the classical prize of victory, awarded to athletes, generals, and conquerors — 'bearing the palm' means winning the greatest prize, being the champion. Volumnia twists the image: if Coriolanus conquers Rome, his 'trophy' will be the blood of his own family. The victor's wreath becomes a mark of horror, not honour.
historical The Roman Triumph
TLN 3326rhetorical device
“Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour, To imitate the graces of the gods, To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air”
'Affected' means desired or pursued. 'Strains' means qualities or tendencies — the fine strains of honour are its highest, most refined characteristics. Volumnia turns his own aspirations against him: he has always tried to be godlike in honour, to thunder like Jove — and then she points out he is 'charging his sulphur with a bolt that should but rive an oak' — spending divine force on something beneath it. 'Rive' means to split or tear apart.
TLN 3336cultural context
“here he lets me prate Like one i' the stocks”
The stocks were a public punishment device — a wooden frame that locked a person's ankles (and sometimes wrists) in the street, holding them helpless while passers-by mocked them. Volumnia compares herself to someone locked in the stocks and babbling uselessly while her captor ignores her. The image captures her helplessness: she is talking at length but cannot move, cannot reach him.
TLN 3386historical topical
“Ladies, you deserve To have a temple built you: all the swords In Italy”
Coriolanus says the women deserve to have a temple built in their honour — the highest civic recognition ancient Rome could give. Plutarch records that a temple was indeed decreed for Volumnia and the women after they saved Rome: it was named Fortuna Muliebris ('the Fortune of Women') and dedicated to the goddess Fortune in her aspect as the patroness of womanly virtue. The play's Coriolanus unknowingly fulfils the historical record.
classical Plutarch's Lives (North's Translation)