THE DISASTERS OF CORIOLANUS AND THEIR CAUSES
Feeling for his country, feeling for his caste, feeling for his family
thus form the triple groundwork of Coriolanus’ nobleness, but they fail
to uphold it in the storm of temptation. As furnishing the foundations
of conduct they have dangers and defects, inherent in themselves, or
incident to their combination, and these it is to which the guilt and
ruin of Coriolanus are due.
These drawbacks may be illustrated under three heads. They are unfit
completely to transfigure egoism, for they have all an egoistic aspect,
and are indeed merely extended forms of selfishness. They are primarily
the products of nature, instinct, passion; and may exist without being
raised to the rank of rational principles and without having their
just scope delimited and defined. And, lastly, for that reason their
relative importance may be mistaken, and one that is the stronger
natural impulse may usurp the place of one that is of more binding
moral authority.
It has often been pointed out, and sometimes as a matter of complaint,
that family affection is very restricted in its range and may conflict
with the larger interests of mankind. It produces an intense unity
within the one household, but it is apt to be jealous, repellent,
aggressive as regards other households and their members. Further,
in so far as it is _my_ parents, _my_ brothers, _my_ children, whose
welfare I promote, the ground of preference has nothing to do with
impartial equity: it is determined by the nearness of the persons to
_me_, by _my_ fondness for them, by my looking on them as appurtenances
of _mine_; in short it is selfish. And those who maintain the
sacredness of the family give this no absolute denial, but reply,
first, that in the long run the true interests of one family, rightly
understood, do not conflict with the true interests of other families,
of the state, or the rest of mankind; and, second, that even before the
true interests are rightly grasped, the family relation forms at least
a stage in the process by which the individual learns to enlarge his
self-interest, a preliminary stage but an inevitable stage, and still
for the vast majority of men the stage of most practical importance.
Many a one is ready to give up his personal pleasure or advantage for
those of his own house, who would be deaf to all more general appeals.
Thus the family so widens self-love as to include in it some other
people, but in one of its aspects it nevertheless depends on self-love.
And the same thing holds good of the enlarged kindred that we call an
aristocracy. The nobility of blood forms a sort of family on a large
scale, a family of caste, an amplified household united by common
pursuits, privileges, education and ideals, and often further blended
by frequent intermarriage. The aristocrat finds himself born into this
artificial, which is in some respects almost like a natural fraternity;
and his ethos to his order, ethos though it be, is largely the ethos of
the individual who recognises his own reflection in his fellow nobles.
Nor is it otherwise with the state, especially, we may say, the
antique city state, where often the aristocracy really was the native
nucleus, and which in the greatest expansion of which it was capable,
did not exceed the dimensions of a modern municipality. The patriotism
of the citizens had the fervour of domestic piety, their disputes had
the bitterness of family quarrels. In the community its sons exulted
and lived and moved and had their being: it was theirs and they were
its, in opposition to the alien states, the states of other people, to
which they were apt to be indifferent or hostile.
Now it is evident that all these principles in the case of a man with
a strong consciousness of his own worth and superlative self-respect,
might give substance and validity to his egoism, but would rather
encourage than counteract it. And so with Coriolanus. His independent,
individual, isolated sufficiency passes all bounds. He derives
sustenance for it from the three layers of atmosphere that envelope
him, but he thinks he can if necessary dispense with these external
aids. In so far as he can separate the people in his mind from the
whole body politic of Rome, he excludes them from his sympathy, or even
his tolerance, and glories in his ostentation of antagonism. Take his
speech about the popular demonstration:
They said they were an-hungry, sigh’d forth proverbs,
That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,
That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only: with these shreds
They vented their complainings.
(I. i. 209.)
In reference to this Archbishop Trench has a very true remark. He
points out that where there is a marked and conscious division of ranks,
[proverbs] may go nearly or quite out of use among
the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord
Chesterfield, “ever uses a proverb.” And with how true a
touch of nature, Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who
with all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy
with the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn of
their proverbs and of their frequent employment of them.
He has indeed no sense of their homely wisdom or their homely virtues.
He has no common charity for them, and his attitude to them if they
venture to assert themselves, is that of a less human slaveholder to
refractory slaves.
Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,
And let me use my sword, I’ld make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter’d slaves, as high
As I could pick my lance.
(I. i. 201.)
After such counsel, we feel that the exclamation of Sicinius is not
without its warrant:
Where is this viper
That would depopulate the city, and
Be every man himself?
(III. i. 263.)
His self-centred confidence and egotism culminates in his retort to his
sentence:
You common cry of curs? whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you.
(III. iii. 120.)
But it is characteristic of this spirit which really makes a man a
law to himself and the measure of things, that though by all his
training and prejudices inclined to the traditional and conservative in
politics, yet, if use-and-wont presses hard against his own pride, he
shows himself an innovator of the most uncompromising kind. He objects
once and again to the prescriptive forms of election, and at last
breaks out:
Custom calls me to ’t!
What custom wills, in all things should we do ’t,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept
And mountainous error be too highly heapt
For truth to o’er-peer.
(II. iii. 124.)
Here he blossoms out as the reddest of radicals, though a radical of
the Napoleonic type.
But, further, his feeling for family, class and country is
pre-eminently feeling. It belongs to those natural tendencies that
almost seem to come to us by heredity and environment, and have
analogies with the instincts of animals. It is, at least in the form
it assumes with him, not to be ranked among the moral convictions
which can stand the examination of conscience and reason, and in the
production of which conscience and reason have co-operated. It is
rather an innate impulse, a headlong passion, and resembles a blind
physical force of which he can give no account. His understanding is
without right of entry into this part of his life. We have seen, no
doubt, that his presuppositions once granted he can form a very acute
estimate of the situation. But he never uses his judgment either
in examining his presuppositions or in discovering the treatment
that the situation requires. He has not the width of outlook or the
self-criticism that enable Menenius and Cominius, and even the ordinary
senators, to see the relative importance of the principles for which
they contend, and prefer any compromise to laying the city flat and
sacking great Rome with Romans. He has not the astuteness of Volumnia,
who perceives that strategy is to be used in government as in war and
bids him stoop to conquer:
I have a heart as little apt as yours,
But yet a brain that leads my use of anger
To better vantage.
(III. ii. 29.)
If it be honour in your wars to seem
The same you are not, which, for your best ends,
You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse,
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honour, as in war, since that to both
It stands in like request?
(III. ii. 46.)
Both in regard to end and means, he listens to the counsels not of his
reason but of his passion and hot blood. As how could he do otherwise?
It is passion not reason that oversways his nature, determining
everything in him from these first fundamental principles to the most
transitory mood. More particularly, that tyrannous self-respect of his,
the personal flame in which all his interests, domestic, aristocratic,
national, are fused, is his central passion, and one that gives more
heat than light. Sometimes, indeed, it kindles him to great things.
When the Volscian army abandons the shelter of Corioli he feels it an
insult to his country, therefore to himself; and the outrage to his
_amour propre_ incites him to do wonders.
They fear us not, but issue forth their city.
Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight
With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave Titus:
_They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts,
Which makes me sweat with wrath_.
(I. iv. 23.)
But again, it may make it impossible for him to take the right path.
When asked to show some outward submission to the people, he answers:
To the market place!
You have put me now to such a part which never
I shall discharge to the life.
(III. ii. 104.)
He was justified in objecting to methods of dissimulation and flattery,
but, if only he had been reasonable, a middle course would not have
been hard to find, which should safeguard his self-respect while
pacifying the populace. It is because his self-respect is of passion
not of reason, that he is so unconciliatory, and therefore almost as
culpable as if he were guilty of the opposite fault. Plutarch, indeed,
thinks he is more so. In his comparison between him and Alcibiades, he
is in this matter more lenient to the latter:
He is lesse to be blamed, that seeketh to please and
gratifie his common people; then he that despiseth and
disdaineth them, and therefore offereth them wrong and
injurie, bicause he would not seeme to flatter them, to
winne the more authoritie. For as it is an evill thing to
flatter the common people to winne credit; even so it is
besides dishonesty, and injustice also, to atteine to credit
and authoritie, for one to make him selfe terrible to the
people, by offering them wrong and violence.
This passage has inspired the criticism of the officer of the Capitol;
who, however, impartially holds the scales.
If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved
indifferently ’twixt doing them neither good nor harm: but
he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can
render it him; and leaves nothing undone that may fully
discover him their opposite. Now, to seem to affect the
malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which
he dislikes, to flatter them for their love.
(II. ii. 18.)
With this temper it is natural that the arrogance of success, lack
of nous, and want of adaptability—which is often merely another form
of self-will—should bring about his ruin; and it is these three
characteristics, or a modicum of them, to which Aufidius in point of
fact attributes his banishment.
First he was
A noble servant to them; but he could not
Carry his honours even: whether ’twas pride,
Which out of daily fortune ever taints
The happy man; whether defect of judgement,
To fail in the disposing of those chances
Which he was lord of; or whether nature,
Not to be other than one thing, not moving
From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace
Even with the same austerity and garb
As he controll’d the war; but one of these—
As he hath spices of them all, not all,
For I dare so far free him—made him fear’d,
So hated, and so banish’d.
(IV. vii. 35.)
But, lastly, not only are the three objective ethical principles that
give Coriolanus his moral equipment, inadequate in so far as their
range is largely selfish and their origin largely natural; he misplaces
the order in which they should come. In the case of Volumnia, despite
all her maternal preference and patrician prejudice, Rome is the grand
consideration, as her deeds unequivocally prove. Nor is she singular;
she is only the most conspicuous example among others of her caste.
Cominius, too, postpones the family to the state:
I do love
My country’s good with a respect more tender,
More holy and profound, than mine own life,
My dear wife’s estimate, her womb’s increase,
And treasure of my loins.
(III. iii. 111.)
And this is more or less the attitude of the rest. But Coriolanus
reverses the sequence, and gives his chief homage precisely to the most
restricted and elementary, the most primitive and instinctive principle
of the three. He loves Rome indeed, fights for her, grieves for her
shames, and glories in her triumphs; but he loves the nobility more,
and would by wholesale massacre secure their supremacy. He loves the
nobility indeed, but when they, no doubt for the common good, suffer
him to be expelled from Rome, they become to him the “dastard nobles”;
and he makes hardly any account of his old henchman and intimate
Menenius, and none at all of his old comrade and general Cominius. But
he loves his family as himself, and though he strives to root out its
claims from his heart, the attempt is vain. He may exclaim:
Out, affection!
All bond and privilege of nature, break!
(V. iii. 24.)
I’ll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand,
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.
(V. iii. 34.)
But it is mere histrionic make-believe and pretence: at the first words
of Virgilia he cries:
Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace.
(V. iii. 40.)
How could this man, whose personal pride and family pride are
so interwoven, whose self-love and whose virtues are so much an
inheritance of his line, ever hope to sever himself from what makes up
his very being? The home instincts must triumph.
It is well that they should, and this is the redeeming touch that
cancels much of the guilt of apostasy which brands the close of his
career. But all the same we feel that his self-surrender to the
obligations of the family is a less noble thing than his mother’s
self-surrender to the obligations of the state. Of course, in a way,
family and class must with all come before the whole community. Men,
that is, are bound to be more interested in those of their own circle
and their own set than in their fellow-citizens with whom they have
less relation. That gives a very good ground for a man’s constant
unremitting occupation with his nearest and dearest. But, nevertheless,
when the call comes, it is the wider community that has the more
imperative claim.
And it is easy to see that Volumnia, though at the supreme moment
she shows that she herself has the right feeling for the relation,
is responsible for the inverted order in the conception of her son.
Her contempt for the masses, her exaltation of the patricians, her
high-handed insistence on the family authority were almost bound to be
exaggerated in a child growing up under her influence and subjected
to no corrective views. And she must have added to the dangers of her
tuition by dangling before his eyes the ideal personal honour as the
grand prize of life. He wins it and lets it slip again and again, and
when he grasps it at last, it is rent and mangled in his hands. There
is something typical in the episode of his son and the butterfly, as
Valeria narrates it:
I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught
it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over
he comes, and up again; catched it again; or whether his
fall enraged him, or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and
tear it: Ο, I warrant, how he mammocked it!
(I. iii. 65.)
Young Marcius is described as the facsimile and “epitome” of his
father, and Volumnia is well pleased with this example of the family
bent. She must not disclaim her share in the preparation, when the
father enacts the apologue in the larger theatre of life.
And she is even responsible for some of the mistaken courses that
directly lead to the disaster.
For Coriolanus, with all his blind sides and rough corners, might still
be the faithful and honoured champion of Rome if he were left to follow
his own predestined and congenial path as military leader. In the field
he can rouse the courage of the citizens and fire their enthusiasm,
while on his part, when he wins their recognition and devotion, he
lays aside some of his asperity to them, and is even gracious in his
awkward, convincing way. They forget their hatred, he forgets his
scorn. And to him as warrior the whole population, not only the portion
of it that has the franchise, is ready to do honour. The description
which the chagrined tribune gives of his triumphal progress through
the streets shows with what cordial pride all ranks were eager to pay
him homage. There is no reason why he should not continue to discharge
in this his proper sphere the functions that none could discharge so
well. His political weight is from the first small. Despite his urgent
dissuasion he has been powerless to prevent the distribution of corn
or the concession of the tribunate. And when he does not intrude into
this outlying domain, where he effects nothing, he seems to go his own
way peaceably enough, occupied mainly in watching for the common good
the movements of Aufidius and the Volscians; so that, so far as his
antipathy to the people is concerned, his bark is worse than his bite.
That is the point of the similes that Brutus and Menenius exchange
about him when Menenius has compared the plebs to a wolf and Coriolanus
to a lamb. Says the tribune:
He’s a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.
And the senator answers:
He’s a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb.
(II. i. 12.)
But thrust him into a position that involves political authority, and
all will be changed. It will be impossible for him to confine himself
to harmless growls; the bear will have the people in his hug, and
they are not to blame if they take to their weapons. In short the
antagonism, which before was, so to speak, academic and led to nothing,
must become a matter of life and death. Now it must not be overlooked
that it is in obedience to his mother’s ambitions and in opposition to
his own better judgment that Coriolanus stands for the consulship. Of
course, in a way, it is the natural goal of his career. Even Menenius
is so blinded by the glamour of the situation that he interposes no
prudent warning. Nevertheless, if he had only exercised his accustomed
shrewdness he would have seen the mischievousness of such a course; for
in a remark to the tribune he sums up admirably the perils it involves:
He loves your people;
But tie him not to be their bedfellow;
(II. ii. 68.)
yet for all that, Menenius is the candidate’s most active
electioneering agent. When his sagacity so neglects its own
suggestions, it is perhaps not wonderful that Volumnia’s narrower
intellect should ignore everything but her visions of glory for
herself and her son. And yet she might have laid to heart his sincere
remonstrance:
Know, good mother,
I had rather been their servant in my way,
Than sway with them in theirs.
(II. i. 218.)
She cannot be acquitted of driving him into the false position.
And she is equally responsible for the fiasco and disaster in which his
attempted submission ends. Observe that this is not the only course he
might have adopted. Cominius, entering in the middle of the discussion,
suggests two others:
I have been i’ the market-place; and, sir, ’tis fit
You make strong party, or defend yourself
By calmness or by absence.
(III. ii. 93.)
The first expedient of making strong party and resorting to force is
out of the question, both because, as Cominius has already pointed
out, it is practically hopeless in face of the odds, and because, as
he and others have also pointed out, even if successful it would ruin
the state. The second expedient of calmness and conciliation is the
one that Volumnia and Menenius in their pertinacious craving to see
Coriolanus consul, strongly advocate; and in the abstract it is the
right one. But it suffers from a drawback which makes it worse than
hopeless, and which Cominius has the foresight to recognise. “Only fair
speech,” says Menenius, and Cominius rejoins very doubtfully:
I _think_ ’t will serve, _if_ he
Can thereto frame his spirit.
(III. ii. 95.)
That is just the point; and one wonders how anyone who knew Coriolanus
could expect of him so impossible a feat. There remains the expedient
of absence, which Cominius, from the third place he assigns to it,
himself seems to prefer. And in the circumstances it is obviously the
best. If only the accused had withdrawn for a time, he would soon
have been recalled. It is inconceivable that when the new expedition
of the Volscians, which he alone foresaw, broke into Roman territory,
the state would not at once have had recourse to the great commander.
Nor would there have been much difficulty in doing so, since he would
merely have betaken himself to voluntary retirement; and even had
he been exiled in default, the mutual exasperation on both sides,
which the last collision was to produce, would have been avoided.
But again it is Volumnia’s overbearing self-will that imposes on him
the pernicious choice. And though, as I have said, this proposal is
ideally the best, for in such cases management and compromise are
legitimate enough and may be laudable, it is not only the worst in
the present instance, but she gives it a turn that must have made it
peculiarly revolting to her son. In her covetousness for the consular
dignity she recommends such hypocrisy, trickery and base cringing as
the self-respect of no honest man, much less of a Coriolanus, could
tolerate:
I prithee now, my son,
Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand;
And thus far having stretch’d it—here be with them—
Thy knee bussing the stones—for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than the ears—waving thy head,
Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry
that will not hold the handling: or say to them,
Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils
Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,
Were fit for thee to use as they to claim,
In asking their good loves, but thou wilt frame
Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far
As thou hast power and person.
(III. ii. 72.)
The amicable policy need not have been painted in such colours as
these. It is inevitable that Coriolanus, already inclined to regard
it as a degradation, should after these words construe it in the most
humiliating-sense:
Well, I must do’t:
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d,
Which quired with my drum, into a pipe
Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! The smile 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,
Who bow’d but in the stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms.
(III. ii. 110.)
What wonder that his conclusion is to reject such tactics lest they
should dishonour his integrity and degrade his soul? His mother’s anger
indeed makes him abandon this decision, but his instincts are right.
It is a part that of course he could not play under any circumstances,
but she has done nothing to show it in its more honourable aspect, and
everything to confirm and increase his feeling of its vileness. His
sourness and recalcitrance at being false to himself makes him boil
over the more fiercely at the first provocation, and all is lost.
It is sometimes said that defeat and the desire for vengeance teach
him the lessons which his mother had inculcated in vain, and that
henceforth he shows himself a master of dissimulation, flattery, and
deception. In proof of this it is usual to cite, in the first place,
the farewell scene, when he breathes no word to Cominius, Menenius,
Virgilia, or Volumnia of his intention to join the Volscians and return
to overthrow Rome. But was any such intention as yet in his mind? In
Plutarch he has adopted no definite plan before he sets out. After
telling how he comforts his family, the biography proceeds:
He went immediatly to the gate of the cittie, accompanied
with a great number of Patricians that brought him thither,
from whence he went on his waye with three or foure of his
friendes only, taking nothing with him, nor requesting
any thing of any man. So he remained a fewe dayes in the
countrie at his houses, turmoyled with sundry sortes and
kynde of thoughtes, suche as the fyer of his choller dyd
sturre up. In the ende, seeing he could resolve no waye, to
take a profitable or honorable course, but only was pricked
forward still to be revenged of the Romaines, he thought to
raise up some great warres against them, by their neerest
neighbours.
Of course it is quite true, and it has been one purpose of this essay
to show, that Shakespeare often completely recasts Plutarch. But it
is also true that, when he does not expressly do so, he often keeps
Plutarch’s statements in his mind, even when, as in the case of the
voting by tribes, he does not cite them. It counts for something then,
that in the _Life_, Coriolanus on leaving Rome has no fixed purpose
of seeking foreign help. And if we turn to the parting scene in the
tragedy, and let it make its own impression, without reading into
it suggestions from subsequent occurrences, I think we feel not so
much that he is still undecided as that the idea has not yet entered
into his head. We seem to hear the very accent of sincerity in his
repetition of the maxims that erewhile he learned from his mother’s own
lips, and that he clinches with the reminder:
You were used to load me
With precepts that would make invincible
The heart that conn’d them.
(IV. i. 9.)
Surely it is a real attempt at consolation, when he interrupts her
maledictions on the plebeians who have banished him:
What, what, what!
I shall be loved, when I am lack’d.
(IV. i. 14.)
He seems to hint at seeking out new adventures and a new career in new
regions beyond the reach of Rome, when he says:
My mother, you wot well
My hazards still have been your solace: and
Believe’t not lightly—though I go alone,
Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen
Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen—your son
Will or exceed the common or be caught
With cautelous baits and practice.
(IV. i. 27.)
It was not cautelous baits and practice that he would have to fear,
but the open violence of Aufidius if he already thought of going to
Antium, and the simile of the lonely dragon more talked of than seen
would be abundantly inappropriate if it referred to his reappearance
at the head of the Volscian forces: but the expressions would be quite
apt if he meant to make his name redoubtable by his single prowess in
strange places amidst the risks of an errant life. It is in professed
anticipation of this that he rejects the companionship which Cominius
offers:
Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full
Of the wars’ surfeits, to go rove with one
That’s yet unbruised.
(IV. i. 45.)
Are these utterances mere pretence? And have not his last farewells
the genuine note of cordiality and good will? If we could imagine that
he would bring himself to address those whom he afterwards called the
“dastard nobles” as “my friends of noble touch,” it would still be
impossible to believe him guilty of cold-hearted deceit to Virgilia and
Volumnia.
Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and
My friends of noble touch, when I am forth
Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you, come.
While I remain above the ground, you shall
Hear from me still, and never of me aught
But what is like me formerly.
(IV. i. 48.)
It would not be like the former champion of Rome to return as its
assailant; but we may take it that at this moment he is expecting to
carve his way to glory in a different world and perhaps eventually be
recalled to his country, but in any case to proceed merely on the old
lines in so far as that is possible, and meanwhile to be reported of,
as Menenius continues, “worthily as any ear can hear.”
If, then, he is speaking honestly in this scene, how are we to account
for his change of purpose when we next meet him a renegade in Antium?
No explanation was needed in Plutarch, for the circumstances were not
quite the same. There he had only not resolved to join the enemy; here
he apparently has resolved to do something else. In the _Life_ after
leaving the city he merely comes to a decision, in the play he reverses
the decision he has formed. So some statement is needed of the cause
for the alteration of his plans, and at first sight there seems to be
none. Yet there is a hint and a fairly emphatic one, though it has not
been worked out; a hint, moreover, which is the more significant that
it is one of Shakespeare’s interpolations.
When the sentence of banishment is pronounced and Coriolanus has
retired to his house, there follows a passage which has no parallel or
foundation in Plutarch. It is the one already referred to in another
connection in which Sicinius gives his mean and malicious order to the
people:
Go, see him out at gates, and follow him,
As he hath follow’d you, with all despite:
Give him deserved vexation.
(III. iii. 138.)
And the citizens promptly agree:
Come, come; let’s see him out at gates; come.
(III. iii. 141.)
This is at the very close of the Third Act, and the Fourth Act begins
in “Rome, before a gate of the city” with the scene of leave-taking
discussed above. We naturally expect that it will be interrupted by the
popular demonstrations which the tribunes have contrived, especially
as these exist only in Shakespeare’s imagination; but it passes off
without any hint of them. Only patrician persons appear by whom
Coriolanus is beloved and who are beloved by him: and no hostile murmur
jars on the solemnity of their grief. But that does not mean that it
may not do so even now. He is not yet beyond the walls, and towards the
close bids his friends: “Bring me out at gate”; which, we assume, they
do forthwith. There is still time for the plebeians to execute their
masters’ orders, and though we witness nothing of the kind, there is no
reason to believe that they failed to do so. It is easy to conjecture
why Shakespeare thought it unnecessary to present this incident to
eye and ear. It would have disturbed the quiet dignity of the parting
interview; it would have repeated at a lower pitch, without the
accompaniment of suspense, and therefore with the risk of monotony and
flatness, the tumultuary _motif_ of preceding scenes. But Shakespeare’s
variations from his authority are not idle, and we cannot suppose that
the tribune’s direction, though we do not actually see it carried out,
was a meaningless tag. There is room enough in the economy of the
play for its fulfilment beyond the stage. We may imagine that just as
Coriolanus’ friends proceed to “bring him out at gate” the insulting
irruption takes place; and in the next scene, “a street near the gate,”
we find the tribunes, the work done, dismissing their agents:
Bid them all home; he’s gone, and we’ll no further.
(IV. ii. i.)
It seems probable that this last indignity, a hurt to his pride more
galling than any refusal of office or sentence of banishment, drives
Coriolanus to his fury of vindictiveness; and that the failure of the
nobles to protect him from the outrage has in his eyes confounded
them with his more ignoble enemies. Indeed, he almost says as much in
his speech to Aufidius. In that speech, as we have seen, Shakespeare
adheres more closely to North than in any other continuous passage in
the play, and the greatest variation occurs in a line that would apply
with peculiar aptness to the purely Shakespearian episode of the last
affront, and that sets forth the main cause of the exile’s resentment.
In Plutarch, after saying that only the surname of Coriolanus remains
to him, he continues:
The rest the envie and crueltie of the people of Rome have
taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobilitie
and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be
banished by the people.
This becomes:
The cruelty and envy of the people,
Permitted by our dastard nobles, who
Have all forsook me, hath devour’d the rest:
_And suffer’d me by the voice of slaves to be
Whoop’d out of Rome_.
(IV. v. 80.)
Considering all these things there seems to be no evidence in Marcius’
parting professions of acquired duplicity.
But, again, it is said that for his revenge he condescends to fawn upon
Aufidius and the Volscians. This is not very plausible. His speech of
greeting certainly shows no servile propitiation, and according to
Tullus it is conspicuously absent in his subsequent behaviour:
He bears himself more proudlier,
Even to my person, than I thought he would
When first I did embrace him: yet his nature
In that’s no changeling; and I must excuse
What cannot be amended.
(IV. vii. 8.)
And elsewhere Tullus complains that his guest has “waged him with his
countenance.” The only ground for saying that he paid court to the
Volsces is alleged in Tullus’ speech that just precedes this accusation
of haughtiness to himself:
He water’d his new plants with dews of flattery,
Seducing so my friends; and, to this end,
He bow’d his nature, never known before
But to be rough, unswayable and free.
(V. vi. 23.)
But the speaker is an enemy, and an enemy who has to account for the
disagreeable circumstance that his own adherents have gone over to
his rival, and who, moreover, at the time is looking for a plea that
“admits of good construction.” There is nothing that we see or hear of
Coriolanus elsewhere that supports the charge. We are told, indeed,
that the Volscians throng to him and do him homage. The very magnates
of Antium, Aufidius included, treat him like a demi-god:
Why, he is so made on here within, as if he were son and
heir to Mars; set at upper end o’ the table: no question
asked by any of the senators, but they stand bald before
him: our general himself makes a mistress of him; sanctifies
himself with ’s hand and turns up the white o’ the eye to
his discourse.
(IV. v. 203.)
Recruits throng to his standard and the army worships him. The
Lieutenant tells Aufidius:
I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but
Your soldiers use him as the grace ’fore meat,
Their talk at table, and their thanks at end.
(IV. vii. 2.)
Doubtless this enthusiasm would have its effect on Marcius. Eagerness
of service, coupled with confidence in himself, has before now warmed
him to graciousness, and in his own despite wrung from him inspiring
compliments. When at Cominius’ camp before Corioli the volunteers
crowded round him, waved their swords, and took him up in their arms,
he was almost hyperbolical in his praises:
O, me alone! make you a sword of me?
If these shows be not outward, which of you
But is four Volsces? none of you but is
Able to bear against the great Aufidius
A shield as hard as his.
(I. vi. 76.)
So we may well believe that his soldierly spirit would respond
promptly and lavishly when the Volscians rallied round him. But such
appreciation, however his outstripped competitor might interpret it,
would have nothing in common with the arts of the sycophant and the
time-server; nor is there anything else in Coriolanus’ conduct that
explains or confirms ever so slightly the charge of the interested and
envious Aufidius.
On the contrary he remains true, and even too true, to his original
nature. It is the outrage on his self-respect that drives him to the
Volscians, and his self-respect still gives the law to his life, and
would forbid all petty vices, though it enjoins heroic crime. A man
like this could not be expected to palliate or overlook the profanation
of his cherished dignity. The passion of pride at his ear, he sets
himself to rupture all weaker ties of passion or instinct. And yet he
himself is half aware of his mistake, and he has to fortify himself in
his obstinate perversity. This is shown in two ways: first, he has a
smothered sense of the inadequacy of his justification; and, second, he
cannot with all his efforts be quite consistent in his revenge.
Of his repressed feeling that the offence does not excuse the
retaliation, we have repeated confessions on his part, all the more
striking that they are involuntary and perhaps unconscious. Thus, just
after he has sought out the enemy of his country, he soliloquises:
O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise,
Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love
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,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends
And interjoin their issues. So with me:
My birth-place hate I, and my love’s upon
This enemy town.
(IV. iv. 12.)
Here he acknowledges that his change of sides has the most trivial
occasion. Friends fall out on a dissension of a doit while foes are
reconciled for some trick not worth an egg; and he applies this
principle to his own case: “So with me.” After all he has infinitely
more in common with the Romans than he can ever have in common with the
Volscians, infinitely more reason for hating this enemy town than he
can ever have for hating his own birth-place.
Or again, when on the point of dismissing Menenius, he says:
That we have been familiar
Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison, rather
Than pity note how much.
(V. ii. 91.)
He admits, then, that his wilful oblivion is “ingrate,” and realises
that pity would consider the old relations.
Or, once more, almost at the close, when he feels himself in danger of
yielding to the voice of nature, he utters the truculent prayer:
Let it be virtuous to be obstinate;
(V. iii. 26.)
which implies that he knew it was not.
On the other hand, with all his doggedness, he cannot be quite
consequent in his rancour. He may lead her foes against his “thankless
country” as he calls it, but he has a lurking kindliness even for the
Rome he thinks he detests. As we learn from Aufidius’ speech:
Although it seems,
And so he thinks, and is no less apparent
To the vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly,
And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state,
Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon
As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone
That which shall break his neck or hazard mine,
Whene’er we come to our account.
(IV. vii. 19.)
This is no doubt suggested by the incident of the thirty days’
truce, of which Plutarch makes so much and which Shakespeare totally
suppresses. But the vague reference becomes all the more pregnant, when
we are to understand that Coriolanus has at unawares and against his
purpose granted some little concessions to the victims of his wrath.
That Aufidius’ statement has some foundation, is made probable by
the words of the First Antium Lord, who is no enemy to Marcius, but
reproaches Tullus with his murder and reverently bewails his death:
What faults he made before the last, I think,
Might have found easy fines.
(V. vi. 64.)
Faults, then, from the Volscian point of view he has committed in the
opinion of a sympathetic and impartial onlooker: which means that as a
Roman he has shown forbearance.
So much for the toll that he pays to his patriotism; but neither can
he quite uproot the old associations with his class. He may denounce
the “dastard nobles,” but he does concede something to Menenius, the
patrician whose aristocratic prejudices are most akin to his own:
Their latest refuge
Was to send him; for whose old love I have,
Though I show’d sourly to him, once more offer’d
The first conditions, which they did refuse
And cannot now accept: to grace him only
That thought he could do more, _a very little_
_I have yielded to_.
(V. iii. 11.)
And, coming to the chief in his trinity of interests, he may seek
to break all bond and privilege of nature and refuse to be such a
gosling to obey instinct, but the natural instinct of the family is too
strong for him; before it his resolution crumbles to pieces, though he
foresees the result.
O mother, mother!
What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,
The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!
You have won a happy victory to Rome;
But for your son,—believe it, O, believe it,
Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d,
If not most mortal to him.
(V. iii. 182.)
Still this collapse of Coriolanus’ purpose means nothing more than
the victory of his strongest impulse. There is no acknowledgment
of offence, there is no renovation of character, there is not even
submission to the highest force within his experience. Our admiration
of his surrender is not unmixed. It is a moving spectacle to see a
man, despite all the solicitations of wrath and revenge, of interest
and fear, obedient to what is on the whole so salutary an influence
as domestic affection. But loyalty to this will not of itself avail
to safeguard anyone from criminal entanglements, or to equip him for
beneficent public action, or to change the current of his life. It
may mean the triumph of a natural tendency that happens to be good
over other natural tendencies that happen to be bad, but it does not
mean acceptance of duty as duty, or anxiety to satisfy the claims
that different duties impose. Hence Coriolanus, to the very end,
leaves unredeemed his inherited obligations to Rome, while he leaves
unfulfilled his voluntary pledges to his allies. Even in Plutarch’s
narrative Shakespeare’s insight is not required to detect this
underlying thought, but in the _Comparison_, which there is proof that
Shakespeare had studied, it is set forth so clearly that he who runs
may read.
He made the Volsces (of whome he was generall) to lose the
oportunity of noble victory. Where in deede he should (if he
had done as he ought) have withdrawen his armie with their
counsaill and consent, that had reposed so great affiance
in him, in making him their generall: if he had made that
accompt of them, as their good will towards him did in duety
binde him. Or else, if he did not care for the Volsces in
the enterprise of this warre, but had only procured it of
intent to be revenged, and afterwards to leave it of, when
his anger was blowen over; yet he had no reason for the
love of his mother to pardone his contrie; but rather he
should in pardoning his contrie have spared his mother,
bicause his mother and wife were members of the bodie of his
contrie and cittie, which he did besiege. For in that he
uncurteously rejected all publike petitions ... to gratifie
only the request of his mother in his departure; that was
no acte so much to honour his mother with, as to dishonour
his contrie by, the which was preserved for the pitie
and intercession of a woman, and not for the love of it
selfe, as if it had not bene worthie of it. And so was this
departure a grace, to say truly, very odious and cruell, and
deserved no thanks of either partie, to him that did it. For
he withdrew his army, not at the request of the Romaines,
against whom he made warre: nor with their consent, at whose
charge the warre was made.
That Shakespeare, with his patriotism and equity, perceived the double
flaw in Coriolanus’ act of grace can hardly be doubted. He was the last
man to put the household above the national gods, or to glorify breach
of contract if only it were sanctioned by domestic tenderness. In point
of fact, he does not acquit his hero on either count.
On the one hand, if Coriolanus remits the extreme penalty, he neither
forgets nor forgives, and has no thought of return to the offending
city or resumption of the old ties. Scarcely has he granted the ladies
their boon, when he addresses Aufidius:
For my part
I’ll not to Rome, I’ll back with you.
(V. iii. 197.)
And his speech to the senators of Antium shows no revival of former
loyalties:
Hail, lords! I am return’d your soldier,
No more infected with my country’s love
Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting
Under your great command. You are to know
That prosperously I have attempted and
With bloody passage led your wars even to
The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought home
Do more than counterpoise a full third part
The charges of the action. We have made peace
With no less honour to the Antiates
Than shame to the Romans.
(V. vi. 71.)
The insolent announcement of the invasion carried to the gates of the
capital, of the plunder that substantially exceeds the cost, of the
humiliating terms imposed on his countrymen, is ample proof that in
Coriolanus there is no recrudescence of patriotism.
Yet, despite his words, he has been false to the Volscians. However
base were his motives, Aufidius speaks the truth when he says:
Perfidiously
He has betray’d your business, and given up,
For certain drops of salt, your city Rome,
I say “your city,” to his wife and mother;
Breaking his oath and resolution like
A twist of rotten silk, never admitting
Counsel o’ the war.
(V. vi. 91.)
It is the opinion of the First Lord, despite his impartiality and his
sympathy with Marcius:
There to end
Where he was to begin, and give away
The benefit of our levies, answering us
With our own charge; making a treaty where
There was a yielding,—this admits no excuse,
(V. vi. 65.)
Thus both his native and his adopted country have reason to complain.
He remains a traitor to the one, while yet he breaks faith with the
other.
Of course, in theory there was a middle course possible, which would
have served the best interests of the two states equally. He might have
used his influence to establish a lasting and intimate alliance; and
this was the policy that Volumnia outlined in her plea:
If it were so that our request did tend
To save the Romans, thereby to destroy
The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us
As poisonous to your honour: no; our suit
Is, that you reconcile them: while the Volsces
May say, “This mercy we have show’d”; the Romans,
“This we received”; and each in either side
Give the all-hail to thee, and cry “Be blest
For making up this peace!”
(V. iii. 132.)
But such an all-hail was not for Coriolanus to win. It is one of the
charges which Plutarch brings against him in the _Comparison_, that he
neglected the opportunity.
By this dede of his he tooke not away the enmity that was
betwene both people.
But how could he, when he had no special desire for the well-being of
either, and when his heart was unchanged? His family affection has got
the better of his narrower egoism, but even after sacrificing a portion
of his revenge, he remains essentially the man he was, and is no more
capable of pursuing a judicious and conciliatory policy now for the
good of the whole and his own good, than of old in the market-place of
Rome.
For to the end he is imprudent, headstrong, and violent as ever. He
sees quite clearly that his compliance with his mother’s prayer must be
dangerous, if not mortal, to him. Dangerous it is, mortal it need not
be. With a little more self-restraint and circumspection, a little less
aggressiveness and truculence, he might still preserve both his life
and his authority. It is his unchastened spirit, not the questionable
treaty, that is the direct cause of his death. Indeed, in a sense,
the treaty had nothing to do with it. In Shakespeare, though not in
Plutarch, Tullus, as we have seen, when he still anticipated the
capture of Rome, determined to make away with his rival so soon as that
should take place; and from what we know of Coriolanus’ character, and
Tullus’ comprehension of it[263] and general astuteness in management,
we feel sure that the scheme was bound to succeed, if Coriolanus
persisted in his old ways. Even as things have turned out, Marcius
has all the odds in his favour. His triumphal entry into Antium is a
repetition of his triumphal entry into Rome. When, according to the
stage direction, “Drums and trumpets sound, with great shouts of the
People,” the malcontents turn to Aufidius:
_First Conspirator._ Your native town you enter’d like a post,
And had no welcomes home; but he returns,
Splitting the air with noise.
_Second Conspirator._ And patient fools,
Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear
With giving him the glory.
(V. vi. 50.)
[263] See Appendix F.
That is, the admiration of the populace, constrained by his prowess,
is the same sort of obstacle to these factionaries as it formerly was
to the tribunes; and with that, and his great services as well, he
commands the situation. He needs only a minimum of skill and moderation
to carry all before him. So the problem of his antagonists is the
same in both cases: namely, to neutralise these advantages by rousing
his passion, and provoking him to show his pride, his recklessness,
his uncompromising rigour. In both cases he falls into the trap, and
converts the popular goodwill to hatred by defiantly harping on the
injuries he has inflicted on his admirers. He is the unregenerate
“superman” to the last. The suppression of his victorious surname,
the taunts of “traitor” and “boy,” drive him mad. He lets himself be
transported to a bravado that must shake from sleep all the latent
hostility of the Volscians.
Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart
Too great for what contains it. Boy! O slave!
Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever
I was forc’d to scold. Your judgements, my grave lords,
Must give this cur the lie: and his own notion—
Who wears my stripes impress’d upon him; that
Must bear my beating to his grave—shall join
To thrust the lie unto him.
_First Lord._ Peace, both, and hear me speak.
_Coriolanus._ Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads,
Stain all your edges on me. Boy! false hound!
If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there,
That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli;
Alone I did it. Boy!
The patient fools, whose children he had slain, are not patient now,
and no longer tear their throats in acclaiming his glory. Their cries,
“Tear him to pieces,” “He killed my son,” and the like, give the
conspirators the cue, and Aufidius is presently standing on his body.
It is not, then, as a martyr to retrieved patriotism that Coriolanus
perishes, but as the victim of his own passion. In truth, the victory
he won over himself under the influence of his mother, though real, is
very incomplete. His piety to the hearth saves him from the superlative
infamy of destroying his country, which is something, and even a good
deal; but it is not everything; and beyond that it has no result,
public or personal. On the contrary, Coriolanus’ isolated and but
partly justified act of clemency receives its comment from the motives
that induced it, the troth-breach that accompanied it, and the rage
in which he passed away. If, like his son with the butterfly, he did
grasp honour at the close, it was disfigured by his rude handling.
But at least he never belies his own great though mixed nature, and
it is fitting that his death, needless but heroic, should have its
cause in his nature and be such as his nature would select. Indeed,
it is both his nemesis and his guerdon. For he would not be a Roman,
he could not be a Volsce; what part could he have played in the years
to come? Perhaps Shakespeare read in Philemon Holland’s rendering the
alternative account that Livy gives of the final scene.
I find in Fabius, a most ancient writer, that he lived
untill he was an old man: who repeateth this of him: that
oftentimes in his latter daies he used to utter this speech:
_A heavie case and most wretched, for an aged man to live banisht_.
At all events some such feeling as his regrets in this variant
tradition suggest, makes us prefer the version that Plutarch followed
and that Shakespeare adapted. Coriolanus deserves to be spared the woes
that the future has in store. As it is, he falls in the fulness of his
power, inspired by great memories to greater audacity, and, no doubt,
elated at the thought of challenging and outbraving death, when death
is sure to win.
APPENDIX A
NEAREST PARALLELS BETWEEN GARNIER’S _CORNELIE_, IN THE FRENCH AND
ENGLISH VERSIONS, AND _JULIUS CAESAR_
It should be remembered that it is not on these particular equivalents,
mostly very loose, that those who uphold the theory of connection
between the two plays rely, but on the general drift of the
corresponding scenes which in this respect strikingly resemble each
other and in no way produce the same impression as the narrative of
Plutarch.
_French. English._
_Cassie._ Miserable Cité, tu _Cassius._ Accursed Rome,
armes contre toy that arm’st against thy selfe
La fureur d’un Tyran pour le A Tyrants rage, and mak’st a
faire ton Roy: wretch thy King:
Tu armes tes enfans, injurieuse For one mans pleasure
Romme, (O injurious Rome!)
Encontre tes enfans, pour le Thy chyldren gainst thy
plaisir d’un homme: chyldren arm’d:
Et ne te souvient plus _And thinkst not of the_
_d’avoir faict autrefois_ _riuers of theyr bloode,_
_Tant ruisseler de sang four_ _That earst were shed to_
_n’avoir point de Rois,_ _ saue thy libertie,_
_Pour n’estre point esclave,_ _Because thou euer hatedst_
_et ne porter flechie_ _Monarchie_.[264]...
_Au sendee d’un seul, le joug de_
_Monarchie_.[265] (line 1065.)
[264]
Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome?
My ancestors did from the streets of Rome
The Tarquin drive when he was call’d a King.
(II. i. 51.)
[265]
Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome?
My ancestors did from the streets of Rome
The Tarquin drive when he was call’d a King.
(II. i. 51.)
... Quoy Brute? et nous faut-il But, Brutus, shall wee
trop craignant le danger, dissolutelie sitte
Laisser si laschement sous un And see the tyrant line
Prince ranger? to tyranize?
_Faut-il que tant de gens morts_ Or shall _theyr ghosts,_
_pour nostre franchise_ _that dide to doe us good_,
_Se plaignent aux tombeaux de_ _Plaine in their Tombes of_
_nostre couardise?_ _our base cowardise_....
Et que les _peres vieux voisent_
_disant de nous_,
“_Ceux-là ont mieux aimé, tant_ “_See where they goe that haue_
_ils ont le coeur mous,_ _theyr race forgot!_
_Honteusement servir en_ _And rather chuse, (unarm’d)_
_dementant leur race,_ _to serue with shame,_
_Qu’armez pour le païs mourir_ _Then, (arm’d), to saue their_
_dessus la place._”[266] _freedom and their fame!_”[267]
(line 1101.)
[266]
Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
(I. ii. 150.)
Our fathers’ minds are dead
And we are govern’d by our mothers’ spirits,
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
(I. iii. 82.)
[267]
Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
(I. ii. 150.)
Our fathers’ minds are dead
And we are govern’d by our mothers’ spirits,
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
(I. iii. 82.)
_Brute._ Je jure par le Ciel, _Brutus._ I swear by heauen,
thrône des Immortels, th’ Immortals highest throne.
Par leurs images saincts, leurs Their temples, Altars, and
temples, leurs autels, theyr Images,
De ne souffrir, vray Brute, To see (for one) that Brutus
aucun maistre entreprendre suffer not
Sur nostre liberte, si je la His ancient liberty to be
puis defendre. represt.
J’ai Cesar en la guerre I freely marcht with Caesar
ardentement suyvi, in hys warrs,
Pour maintenir son droit, Not to be subject, but to ayde
non pour vivre asservi ... his right, ...
... Il verra que Decime But he shall see, that Brutus
a jusques aujourdhuy thys day beares
Porté pour luy l’estoc qu’il The self-same Armes to be
trouvera sur luy. aueng’d on hym....
... _Je l’aime cherement_, _I loue, I loue him deerely._
_je l’aime, mais le droit_ But the loue
_Qu’on doit à son païs_, _That men theyr Country and_
_qu’à sa naissance on doit,_ _theyr birth-right beare,_
_Tout autre amour surmonte._[268]... _Exceeds all loues._[269]...
(line 1109.)
_Cassie._ Tandisque Cassie aura _Cassius_.... Know, while
goutte de sang Cassius hath one drop of blood
En son corps animeux, il voudra To feede this worthles body
vivre franc, that you see,
_Il fuira le servage ostant_ What reck I death, to doe so
_la tyrannie,_ many good?
[268]
If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was
no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus
rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—Not that I
loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more.
(III. ii. 19.)
[269]
If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was
no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus
rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—Not that I
loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more.
(III. ii. 19.)
_Ou l’ame de son corps il_ _In spite of Caesar_,
_chassera bannie._[270] _Cassius will be free._[271]
_Brute._ Toute ame genereuse _Brutus._ A generous or
indocile a servir true enobled spirit
Deteste les Tyrans. Detests to learne what tasts
of seruitude.
_Cassie._ Je ne puis m’asservir, _Cassius._ Brutus, I cannot
serue nor see Rome yok’d:
Ny voir que Rome serve, et plustost No, let me rather die a
la mort dure thousand deaths....
M’enferre mille fois, que vivant
je l’endure....
O chose trop indigne! O base indignitie!
_Un homme effeminé_ ... _A beardles youth_[272] ...
_Commande a l’Univers, la terre_ _Commaunds the world, and_
_tient en bride_,[273] _brideleth all the earth_,[274]
Et maistre donne loy au And like a prince controls
peuple Romulide, the Romulists;
Aux enfants du dieu Mars.... Braue Roman Souldiers,
sterne-borne sons of Mars....
O Brute, O Servilie, O Brutus, speake!
Qu’ores vous nous laissez O say, Servilius!
une race avilie! Why cry you aime,[275]
and see us used thus?
Brute est vivant, il sçait, But Brutus liues, and sees,
il voit, il est present, and knowes, and feeles,
Que sa chere patrie on va That there is one that curbs
tyrannisant: their Countries weale.
Et comme s’il n’estoit Yet (as he were the semblance,
qu’une vaine semblance not the sonne,
De Brut son ayeul, non Of noble Brutus, his
sa vraye semence, great Grandfather);
S’il n’avoit bras ny mains, As if he wanted hands,
sens ny coeur, pour oser, sence, sight or hart,
Simulacre inutile, aux Tyrans He doth, deuiseth, sees,
s’opposer: nor dareth ought,
Il ne fait rien de Brute, et That may extirpe or raze
et d’heure en heure augmente these tyrannies:
Par trop de lascheté la force Nor ought doth Brutus that to
violente. (line 1201.) Brute belongs, But still
increaseth by his negligence
His owne disgrace and
Caesars violence.
[270]
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius ...
Life being weary of these worldly bars
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
(I. iii. 90.)
[271]
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius ...
Life being weary of these worldly bars
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
(I. iii. 90.)
[272] Notice the inept rendering.
[273]
It doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.
(I. ii. 128.)
[274]
It doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.
(I. ii. 128.)
[275] Approve or agree.
APPENDIX B
THE VERBAL RELATIONS OF THE VARIOUS VERSIONS OF PLUTARCH ILLUSTRATED BY
MEANS OF VOLUMNIA’S SPEECH
This passage, though it does not show the successive modifications of
the text quite so fully and strikingly as some others, is the most
interesting in so far as it is the longest in which Shakespeare closely
follows the lead of the original.
The Latin version of the Renaissance is placed first, both because in
definite form it is chronologically the earliest, and because for the
reasons already given it cannot be held to have had much influence on
Amyot, North and Shakespeare.
It is of course impossible to reconstruct the Greek text that Amyot
put together for himself. I have taken that of the edition of 1599,
published half a dozen years after his death, as a fair approximation.
The chief variations from the Latin are given in spaced type.
In the extract from Amyot the chief variations from the Greek are
printed in Italics; the few phrases or words in which the influence of
the Latin may be suspected are underlined.
In the extract from North the chief variations from the French are
printed in Italics.
In the extract from Shakespeare, it is, as we might expect, more
convenient to reverse the process and italicise what he has taken over.
THE VERSION[276] OF THE ELDER GUARINI, STYLED
GUARINUS VERONENSIS, IN THE EDITION OF THE
_Vitae Parallelae_ ISSUED BY UDALRICUS GALLUS
IN 1470 (?)
Tum pueros ac Vergiliam unacum reliquis secum mulieribus ducens castra
Volscorum adiit. Earum miseranda facies hosti reverentiam injecit
atque silentium. Hic Martius in suggesto inter Volscorum proceres
sedens, ubi eas adventare mulieres vidit, admiratione confectus est,
imprimis venientem uxorem noscitans immoto et obstinato persistere
animo[277] voluit: verum consternatus affectu et ad ipsarum confusus
intuitum haud tulit ut se sedentem adirent,[278] ac pernici devotas
gradu obviam prodiit. Et matre primo diutissimeque salutata, inde
uxore ac filiis, nullo jam pacto frenare lacrimas poterat. Ut vero
dulces incepti sunt amplexus, virum parentis amore perinde ac secundo
fluminis cursu deferri cerneres.[279] Caeterum cum inchoantem jam verba
matrem intelligeret, acceptis Volscorum primoribus Volumniam talia
orantem audivit. “Etsi fili taceamus, ipse, tum veste, tum miseri
corporis apparatu, cernis qualem domesticae rei conditionem tuum nobis
confecerit exilium. Existima vero quam caeteris longe mulieribus
infeliciores accessimus, quibus dulcissimum aspectum fecit fortuna
terribilem: te mihi filium, huic vero maritum, patriae muros obsidentem
aspicimus. Et quod caeteris calamitatis et malorum solet esse solacium,
deos orare, quam procul nobis ablatum est: non enim et patriae
victoriam et tibi salutem implorare fas est: quaeque atrociora quispiam
nobis impraecaretur hostis, ea nostris insunt[280] praecibus. Uxorem
enim ac liberos aut patria aut te orbari necesse est. Ego vero, dum
haec viventi mihi bellum dijudicet, haud morabor, teque nisi positis
inimicitiis ad pacem atque concordiam conciliavero; ita ut utrique[281]
potius beneficum quam alteri perniciosum te reddas. Hoc tibi persuade
sicque conformatus et paratus accede, ut non ante hostiles patriae
manus conferas quam caesam calcaveris parentem. Nec enim ea mihi
expectanda dies est qua filium aut in triumpho tractum a civibus aut
de patria triumphantem aspiciam. Quod si pro conservanda patria
profligari a te Volscos exorarem, grave fili iniquumque tibi fateor
imminere consilium; namque necque cives perdere bonum est, necque tuos
commissos fidei perdere justum. Nunc malorum finem imploramus simulque
populis utrisque salutem. Quae res maximam Volscis gloriam comparabit:
quod cum ingentia nobis bona et victores quidem tribuerint, non minus
jocundam ipsi pacem et amicitiam sint consecuturi: quae si effecta
fuerint, tu tantorum profecto dux eris et causa bonorum: sin ea infecta
permanserint, utrique noxam in te solum crimenque rejicient. Cumque
incertus belli sit eventus, hoc certi secum affert: ut siquidem vincas
immanissimus patriae vastator appellandus sis, sin victus succumbas,
ob tuam videberis iracundiam benefactoribus et amicis ingentium origo
malorum extitisse.” Haec dum oraret Volumnia, nullum respondens
verbum Martius intentis excipiebat auribus. Ut vero desierat, cum is
diuturnum teneret silentium, rursus Volumnia; “Quid siles,” inquit.
“Nate, num irae receptarumque injuriarum memoriae omnia concedere
satius arbitraris an depraecanti talia matri largiri pulcherrimum
munificentiae genus non est? Magnine interesse viri putas acceptorum
meminisse malorum? Suscepta autem a parentibus beneficia eorum cultui
ac venerationi reddere num excelso potius ac bono dignissimum viro
munus censes? Caeterum gratiam habere tuerique magisquam tu debuit
nemo, cum tamen per acerbissimam adeo ingratitudinem eas. Et cum
permagnas jam patriae paenas exegeris acceperisque, nullas adhuc matri
grates retulisti. Erat vero aequissimum atque sanctissimum ut abs te
vel nulla ingruenti necessitate tam honesta tamque justa postulans
impetrarem. Quid cum in meam te verbis sententiam deflectere nequeam,
extremae jam parco spei?” Haec affata cum uxore simul ac liberis
pedibus advoluta procumbit. Tum conclamans Martius, “Qualia mihi” ait
“factitasti mater”; et jacentem sustulit: et pressa dextera inquit;
“Vicisti patriae quidem prosperam, nimis atque nimis perniciosam
autem[282] mihi victoriam. Abs te tantum superatus abscedam.”
[276] I have modernised the punctuation, and extended the contractions
throughout, but wherever there is any possibility of misinterpretation
I have noted it.
[277] aīo.
[278] adiret.
[279] cernēs.
[280] Insinit.
[281] uterque.
[282] _aūt._
PLUTARCH’S GREEK IN THE EDITION OF 1599
Ἐκ τούτου, τά τε παιδία καὶ τὴν Οὐεργιλίαν ἀναστήσασα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων
γυναικῶν, ἐβάδιζεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Οὐολούσκων. ἡ δ’ ὄψις
αὐτῶν τότε οἰκτρὰν καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνεποίησεν αἰδὼ καὶ σιωπήν.
ἔτυχε δ’ ὁ Μάρκιος ἐπὶ βήματος καθεζόμενος μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν. ὡς
οὖν εἶδε προσιούσας τὰς γυναῖκας, ἐθαύμασεν· ἐπιγνοὺς δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα
πρώτην βαδίζουσαν, ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐμμένειν τοῖς ἀτρέπτοις ἐκείνοις
καὶ ἀπαραιτήτοις λογισμοῖς· γενόμενος δὲ τοῦ πάθους ἐλάττων καὶ
συνταραχθεὶς πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, οὐκ ἔτλη καθεζομένῳ προσελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ
=καταβὰς= θᾶττον ἢ βάδην, καὶ ἀπαντήσας, πρώτην μὲν ἠσπάσατο τὴν
μητέρα, καὶ πλεῖστον χρόνον, ἔτι δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα, μήτε
δακρύων ἔτι, =μήτε τοῦ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι= φειδόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ
ῥεύματος φέρεσθαι τοῦ πάθους ἑαυτὸν ἐνδεδωκώς. =ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων ἄδην
εἶχε=, καὶ τὴν μητέρα βουλομένην ἤδη λόγων ἄρχειν ἤσθετο, τοὺς τῶν
Οὐολούσκων προβούλους παραστησάμενος, ἤκουσε τῆς Οὐολουμνίας τοιαῦτα
λεγούσης, “Ὁρᾶς μὲν, ὦ παῖ, κᾳν αὐταὶ μὴ λέγωμεν, ἐσθῆτι καὶ μορφῇ
τῶν ἀθλίων σωμάτων τεκμαιρόμενος, οἵαν οἰκουρίαν ἡμῖν ἡ σὴ φυγὴ
περιποίησε. λόγισαι δὲ νῦν ὡς ἀτυχέσταται πασῶν ἀφίγμεθα γυναικῶν, αἷς
τὸ ἥδιστον θέαμα, φοβερώτατον ἡ τύχη πεποίηκεν, ἐμοὶ μὲν υἱὸν, ταύτῃ δ’
ἄνδρα τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος τείχεσιν ἰδεῖν ἀντικαθήμενον. ὃ δ’ ἔστι τοῖς
ἄλλοις ἀτυχίας πάσης καὶ κακοπραγίας παραμύθιον, εὔχεσθαι θεοῖς, ἡμῖν
ἀπορώτατον γέγονεν. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε καὶ τῇ πατρίδι νίκην ἅμα καὶ σοὶ
σωτηρίαν αἰτεῖσθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, ἀλλ’ ἅ τις ἄν ἡμῖν καταράσαιτο τῶν
ἐχθρῶν, ταῦτα ταῖς ἡμετέραις ἔνεστιν εὐχαῖς. ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἢ τῆς πατρίδος
ἢ σου στέρεσθαι γυναικὶ σῇ καὶ τέκνοις. ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ περιμένω ταύτην μοι
διαιτῆσαι τὴν τύχην ζώσῃ τὸν πόλεμον· ἀλλ’ εἰ μή σε πείσαιμι φιλίαν
καὶ ὁμόνοιαν διαφορὰς καὶ κακῶν θέμενον, ἀμφοτέρων γενέσθαι εὐεργέτην
μᾶλλον, ἢ λυμεῶνα τῶν ἑτέρων, οὕτω διανοοῦ καὶ παρασκεύαζε σεαυτὸν, ὡς
τῇ πατρίδι μὴ προσμίξαι δυνάμενος πρὶν ἢ νεκρὰν ὑπερβῆναι τὴν τεκούσαν.
οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνην με δεῖ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀναμένειν ἐν ᾗ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπόψομαι
θριαμβευόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολίτων, ἢ θριαμβεύοντα κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος.
εἰ μὲν οὖν ἀξιῶ σε τὴν πατρίδα σῶσαι Οὐολούσκους ἀπολέσαντα, χαλεπή
σοι καὶ δυσδιαίτητος, ὦ παῖ, πρόκειται σκέψις, οὔτε γὰρ διαφθεῖραι
τοὺς πολίτας καλὸν, οὔτε τοὺς πεπιστευκότας προδοῦναι δίκαιον. νῦν δ’
ἀπαλλαγὴν κακῶν αἰτιούμεθα, σωτήριον μὲν ἀμφοτέροις ὁμοίως, ἔνδοξον
δὲ καὶ καλὴν μᾶλλον Οὐολούσκοις, ὅτι τῷ κρατεῖν δόξουσι διδόναι τὰ
μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν, =οὐχ ἧττον λαμβάνοντες=, εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν, ὧν
μάλιστα μὲν αἴτιος ἔσῃ γινομένων, μὴ γινομένων δὲ, μόνος αἰτίαν ἕξεις
παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις. ἄδηλος δ’ ὠν ὁ πόλεμος τοῦτ’ ἔχει πρόδηλον, ὅτι σοὶ
νικῶντι μὲν, ἀλάστορι τῆς πατρίδος εἶναι περιέστιν· ἡττώμενος δὲ,
δόξεις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εὐεργέταις ἀνδράσι καὶ φίλοις τῶν μεγίστων συμφορῶν
αἴτιος γεγονέναι.” ταῦτα τῆς Οὐολουμνίας λεγούσης ὁ Μάρκιος ἠκροάτο
μηδὲν ἀποκρινόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ παυσαμένης, εἱστήκει σιωπῶν πολὺν
χρόνον, αὖθις ἡ Οὐολουμνία, “Τί σιγᾷς (εἶπεν) ὦ παῖ, πότερον ὀργῇ καὶ
μνησικακίᾳ πάντα συγχωρεῖν καλόν; οὐ καλὸν δὲ μητρὶ χαρίσασθαι δεομένῃ
περὶ τηλικούτων; ἢ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι πεπονθότα κακῶς ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ προσήκει,
τὸ δ’ εὐεργεσίας αἷς εὐεργετοῦνται παῖδες ὑπὸ τῶν τεκόντων σέβεσθαι καὶ
τιμᾷν, οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἔργον ἐστὶ μεγάλου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ; καὶ μὴν οὐδενὶ μᾶλλον
ἔπρεπε τηρεῖν χάριν ὡς σοι, =πικρῶς οὕτως ἀχαριστίαν ἐπεξίοντι=. καίτοι
παρὰ τῆς πατρίδος ἤδη μεγάλας δίκας ἀπείληφας, τῇ μητρὶ δ’ οὐδεμίαν
χάριν ἀποδέδωκας. ἦν μὲν οὖν ὁσιώτατον ἄνευ τινος ἀνάγκης τυχεῖν με
παρὰ σοῦ δεομένην οὕτω καλῶν καὶ δικαίων· μὴ πείθουσα δὲ τί φείδομαι
τῆς ἐσχάτης ἐλπίδος;” καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰποῦσα προσπίπτει τοῖς ποσὶν αὐτοῦ
μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἅμα καὶ τῶν τέκνων. ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἀναβοήσας, “Οἷα
εἴργασαί με, ὦ μᾶτερ;” ἐξανίστησιν αὐτὴν, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν πιέσας σφόδρα,
“Νενίκηκας (εἶπεν) εὐτυχῆ μὲν τῇ πατρίδι νίκην, ἐμοὶ δ’ ὀλέθριον·
ἄπειμι γὰρ ὑπὸ σοῦ μόνης ἡττώμενος.”
AMYOT’S VERSION.