Today’s Totally Random
Lines
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members: for examine
Their counsels and their cares; digest things
rightly
Touching the weal o’the common; you shall find,
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you,
And no way from yourselves. – What do you think,-
You, the great toe of this assembly?
Menenius Agrippa
Coriolanus
Act I, Scene i, Line 147
Another long, you might say run-on, sentence. Well, what’s happening here?
The peasants are revolting because they say that the government is sitting on a storehouse of wheat whilst they, the peasants, starve. Menenius, a friend of Coriolanus and a part of the ruling class, comes out to calm them down. He talks about the body’s parts rebelling against the belly, accusing it of getting all the food. But, of course, the belly answered that, yes, he was the storehouse and processor of the food, but that it was then his job to distribute the proteins to all the parts of the body. And that’s where Menenius segues into today’s lines. When he mentions the weal o’the common, he is, more or less, talking about the welfare of the state. And he finishes by addressing the citizen who he’s talking to as the great toe, because he is out in front of the body of the crowd.
A lot of body references.
Well, I took a picture of my belly, and I was gonna post it.
But it's too discouraging,
too embarrassing,
TOO BIG!
1 comment:
I don't know that I would have thought of my great toe as the thing that's the farthest in front of my body...but I guess it is? Though my belly is sometimes round enough that I think it protrudes farther than my great toe. However, that wouldn't be very fitting for the metaphor.
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