Maggie's Farm

Quote from Dalrymple on Coriolanus and related topics:

The first scene opens with the mob, the stage direction being ‘Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs and other weapons.’ The First Citizen addresses the crowd:
   You know that Caius Marcius [Coriolanus] is chief enemy to the people.
The crowd replies enthusiastically that they know it.
   Let us kill him [continues the First Citizen], and we’ll have corn at our own price.

 

This idea seems a very one to the mob, who agree with him:
   No more talking on’t! Let it be done!
Then the First Citizen enunciates what might be called the first principle of socialist economics, upon which (implicitly, of course) Shakespeare pours scorn):
   What authority surfeits or would relieve us. 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.
In other words, the fundamental problem of economics is one of distribution; and if it were sorted out, all would be well. The redistributionists have ye always with you.