CORIOLANUS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - Contextual Questions 5
A. By whom and in what circumstances is the passage spoken? (Use not more than 50 words.)
B. What is the dramatic significance of the subject matter of the passage?
C. What do you consider to be the interest and importance of the way in which this subject matter is expressed? (In this section you are expected to comment on such matters as diction, imagery and verse.)
(1) Well, I must do’t.
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d,
Which quier’d with my drum, into a pipe
5 Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up
The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue
Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees,
10 Who bow’d but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath receiv’d an alms! I will not do’t,
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,
And by my body’s action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.
(2) O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise
Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love
5 Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity; so fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep
To take the one the other, by some chance,
10 Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends
And interjoin their issues. So with me:
My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon
This enemy town. I’ll enter. If he slay me,
He does fair justice; if he give me way,
15 I’ll do his country service.