Good or bad?

MEN. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Martius.

SIC. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

MEN. Pray you, who does the wolf love?

SIC. The lamb.

MEN. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Martius.

BRU. He's a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.

MEN. He's a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men: tell me one thing that I shall ask you.

BOTH. Well, sir.

MEN. In what enormity is Martius poor in, that you two have not in abundance?

BRU. He's poor in no one fault, but stor'd with all.

SIC. Especially in pride.

BRU. And topping all others in boasting.

MEN. This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censur'd here in the city, I mean of us a' th' right-hand file? do you?

BOTH. Why? how are we censur'd?

MEN. Because you talk of pride now – will you not be angry?

BOTH. Well, well, sir, well.

MEN. Why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your dispositions the reins and be angry at your pleasures; at the least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame Martius for being proud?

BRU. We do it not alone, sir.

MEN. I know you can do very little alone, for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single; your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O that you could!

BOTH. What then, sir?

MEN. Why then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates (alias fools) as any in Rome.

SIC. Menenius, you are known well enough too.

MEN. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favoring the first complaint, hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think, I utter, and spend my malice in my breath.