I shall lack voice. The deeds of Coriolanus Should not be uttered feebly. It is held That valour is the chiefest virtue and Most dignifies the haver; if it be, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpoised. At sixteen years, When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought Beyond the mark of others. Our then dictator, Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight When with his Amazonian chin he drove The bristled lips before him. He bestrid An o’erpressed Roman and i’ th’ Consul’s view Slew three opposers. Tarquin’s self he met And struck him on his knee. In that day’s feats, When he might act the woman in the scene, He proved best man i’ th’ field and for his meed Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age Man-entered thus, he waxed like a sea, And in the brunt of seventeen battles since He lurched all swords of the garland. For this last, Before and in Corioles, let me say, I cannot speak him home. He stopped the flyers And by his rare example made the coward Turn terror into sport. As weeds before A vessel under sail, so men obeyed And fell below his stem. His sword, Death’s stamp, Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot He was a thing of blood, whose every motion Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered The mortal gate o’ th’ city, which he painted With shunless destiny; aidless came off And with a sudden reinforcement struck Corioles like a planet. Now all’s his, When by and by the din of war gan pierce His ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit Requickened what in flesh was fatigate, And to the battle came he, where he did Run reeking o’er the lives of men as if ’Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we called Both field and city ours, he never stood To ease his breast with panting.

Cominius Monologue from Coriolanus

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