So I'm reading a bit of Shakespeare's later plays: The Winter's Tale was for class, and now I've dipped into Coriolanus. It starts with a mob of angry Roman citizens who are starving because of the rich folks' greed.
Here are some lines that should sound familiar (I've broken up Shakespeare's line breaks so that we can see the sentences):
FIRST CITIZEN:
We are accounted poor citizens. . . .
What authority surfeits on would relieve us. [Sounds familiar!]
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. (I, i, ll.13-22).
Later, the crowd is calmed by a smooth-talking friend of the dastardly Coriolanus:
MENENIUS:
I tell you, friends, most charitable care have the patricians of you. [yeah, right!]
For your wants, your suffering in this famine, you may as well strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them against the Roman state . . . .
For the famine, the gods, not the patricians, make it, and your knees to them, not arms, must help.
Alack, you . . . slander the helms of the state, who care for you like fathers, when you curse them as enemies.
FIRST CITIZEN:
Care for us? True, indeed! [Yeah! Right!]
They never cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain;
make edicts for usury, to support usurers;
repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statues daily to chain up and restrain the poor. [sounds like Gov. Walker!]
If the war eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. (I, i, ll. 61-82)
The Bard knew about politics - but this play is a tragedy, and Coriolanus is killed. I hope we have no tragedy on our hands in this era, but I'm not so sure . . . .
Here are some lines that should sound familiar (I've broken up Shakespeare's line breaks so that we can see the sentences):
FIRST CITIZEN:
We are accounted poor citizens. . . .
What authority surfeits on would relieve us. [Sounds familiar!]
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. (I, i, ll.13-22).
Later, the crowd is calmed by a smooth-talking friend of the dastardly Coriolanus:
MENENIUS:
I tell you, friends, most charitable care have the patricians of you. [yeah, right!]
For your wants, your suffering in this famine, you may as well strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them against the Roman state . . . .
For the famine, the gods, not the patricians, make it, and your knees to them, not arms, must help.
Alack, you . . . slander the helms of the state, who care for you like fathers, when you curse them as enemies.
FIRST CITIZEN:
Care for us? True, indeed! [Yeah! Right!]
They never cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain;
make edicts for usury, to support usurers;
repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statues daily to chain up and restrain the poor. [sounds like Gov. Walker!]
If the war eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. (I, i, ll. 61-82)
The Bard knew about politics - but this play is a tragedy, and Coriolanus is killed. I hope we have no tragedy on our hands in this era, but I'm not so sure . . . .
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