must he be, this Roman! Now hear Menenius, a former friend and admirer
of Coriolanus, depict him. Having described, in those compressed
sinewy phrases which Shakespeare has at command, the change in his
nature, he adds, "When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the
ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a
corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a
battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he
bids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god
but eternity and a heaven to throne in."

Hear how a mother's heart, about to break, from the loss of her son,
utters its grief when it has the privilege of using a voice quivering
with poetic fervor. The French king bids Lady Constance be comforted:
she answers,--

"No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
But that which ends all counsel, true redress,
Death, death. O amiable lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows;
And ring these fingers with thy household worms;
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself:
Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st:
And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,
O, come to me!"