ACT I SCENE I. Rome. A street Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons.

FIRST CITIZEN.

Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.

ALL.

Speak, speak!

FIRST CITIZEN.

You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?

ALL.

Resolved, resolved!

FIRST CITIZEN.

First, you know Caius Martius is chief enemy to the people.

ALL.

We know’t, we know’t!

FIRST CITIZEN.

Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t a verdict?

ALL.

No more talking on’t; let it be done. Away, away!

SECOND CITIZEN.

One word, good citizens.

FIRST CITIZEN.

We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely. But they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

SECOND CITIZEN.

Would you proceed especially against Caius Martius?

FIRST CITIZEN.

Against him first. He’s a very dog to the commonalty.

SECOND CITIZEN.

Consider you what services he has done for his country?

FIRST CITIZEN.

Very well, and could be content to give him good report for’t, but that he pays himself with being proud.

SECOND CITIZEN.

Nay, but speak not maliciously.

FIRST CITIZEN.

I say unto you, what he hath done famously he did it to that end. Though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud, which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.