No, I’ll not go. You hear what he hath said

Which was sometime his general, who loved him

In a most dear particular. He called me father,

But what o’ that? Go you that banished him;

A mile before his tent, fall down, and knee

The way into his mercy. Nay, if he coyed

To hear Cominius speak, I’ll keep at home.

He would not seem to know me.

Do you hear?

Yet one time he did call me by my name.

I urged our old acquaintance, and the drops

That we have bled together. “Coriolanus”

He would not answer to, forbade all names.

He was a kind of nothing, titleless,

Till he had forged himself a name i’ th’ fire

Of burning Rome.

Why, so; you have made good work!

A pair of tribunes that have wracked Rome

To make coals cheap! A noble memory!

I minded him how royal ’twas to pardon

When it was less expected. He replied

It was a bare petition of a state

To one whom they had punished.

Very well.

Could he say less?

I offered to awaken his regard

For’s private friends. His answer to me was

He could not stay to pick them in a pile

Of noisome musty chaff. He said ’twas folly

For one poor grain or two to leave unburnt

And still to nose th’ offence.

For one poor grain or two!

I am one of those! His mother, wife, his child,

And this brave fellow too, we are the grains;

You are the musty chaff, and you are smelt

Above the moon. We must be burnt for you.

Nay, pray, be patient. If you refuse your aid

In this so-never-needed help, yet do not

Upbraid’s with our distress. But sure, if you

Would be your country’s pleader, your good tongue,

More than the instant army we can make,

Might stop our countryman.

No, I’ll not meddle.

Pray you, go to him.

What should I do?

Only make trial what your love can do

For Rome, towards Martius.

Well, and say that Martius

Return me, as Cominius is returned, unheard,

What then? But as a discontented friend,

Grief-shot with his unkindness? Say’t be so?

Yet your good will

Must have that thanks from Rome after the measure

As you intended well.

I’ll undertake’t.

I think he’ll hear me. Yet to bite his lip

And hum at good Cominius much unhearts me.

He was not taken well; he had not dined.

The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then

We pout upon the morning, are unapt

To give or to forgive; but when we have stuffed

These pipes and these conveyances of our blood

With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls

Than in our priestlike fasts. Therefore I’ll watch him

Till he be dieted to my request,

And then I’ll set upon him.

You know the very road into his kindness

And cannot lose your way.

Good faith, I’ll prove him,

Speed how it will. I shall ere long have knowledge

Of my success.

He’ll never hear him.

Not?

I tell you, he does sit in gold, his eye

Red as ’twould burn Rome; and his injury

The jailer to his pity. I kneeled before him;

’Twas very faintly he said “Rise”; dismissed me

Thus with his speechless hand. What he would do

He sent in writing after me; what he

Would not, bound with an oath to yield to his

Conditions. So that all hope is vain

Unless his noble mother and his wife,

Who, as I hear, mean to solicit him

For mercy to his country. Therefore let’s hence

And with our fair entreaties haste them on.