POLITICAL RETROSPECT.
'I think he'll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who _takes_ it
By sovereignty of nature.'
FLOWER OF WARRIORS
The poet finds, indeed, this monstrosity full-blown in his time. He
finds it 'in the civil streets,' 'talking plain cannon', 'humming
batteries' in the most unmistakeable manner, with no particular
account of its origin to give, without, indeed, appearing to recollect
exactly how it came there, retaining only a general impression, that a
descent from the celestial regions had, in some way, been effected
during some undated period of human history, under circumstances which
the memory of man was not expected to be able to recall in detail, and
a certificate to that effect, divinely subscribed, was understood to
be included among its properties, though it does not appear to have
been, on the face of it, so absolutely conclusive as to render a
little logical demonstration, on the part of royalty itself,
superfluous.
It was not very far from this time, that a very able and loyal servant
of the crown undertook, openly, to assist the royal memory on this
delicate point; and, though the details of that historical
representation, and the manner of it, are, of course, quite different
from those of the Play, it will be found, upon careful examination,
not so dissimilar in purport as the exterior would have seemed to
imply. The philosopher does not feel called upon, in either case, to
begin by contradicting flatly, in so many words, the theory which he
finds the received one on that point. Even the _poet_, with all his
freedom, is compelled to go to work after another fashion.
'And _thus_ do we, of wisdom, and of reach,
With _windlasses_, and with ASSAYS of BIAS,
By indirections find directions out.'
He has his own way of creating an historical retrospect. No one need
know that it _is_ a retrospect; no one will know it, perhaps, who has
not taken the author's clue elsewhere. The crisis is already reached
when the play begins. The collision between the civil want and the
military government is at its height. It is a revolution on which the
curtain rises. It is a city street filled with dark, angry swarms of
men, who have come forth to seek out this government, in the person of
its chief, who stop only to conduct their summary trial of it, and
then hurry on to execute their verdict.
But the poet arrests this revolution. Before we proceed any further,
'Hear _me_ speak,' he cries, through the lips of the plebeian leader.
The man of science demands a hearing, before this movement proceed any
further. He has a longer story to tell than that with which Menenius
Agrippa appeases his Romans. There is a cry of war in the streets. The
obscure background of that portentous scene opens, and the long vista
of the heroic ages, with all its pomp and stormy splendours, scene
upon scene, grows luminous behind it. The foreground is the same. The
arrested mutineers stand there still, with the frown knit in their
angry brows, with the weapons of their civil warfare in their hands;
there is no stage direction for a change of costume, and none
perceives that they have grown older as they stand, and that the
shadow of the elder time is on them. But the manager of this stage is
one who knows that the elder time of history is the childhood of his
kind.
There is a cry of war in that ancient street. The enemy of the infant
state is in arms. The people rush forth to conflict with the leader of
armies at their head. But this time, for the first time in the history
of literature, the philosopher goes with him. The philosopher,
hitherto, has been otherwise occupied. He has been too busy with his
fierce war of words; he has had too much to do with his abstract
generals, his logical majors and minors, to get them in squadrons and
right forms of war, to have any eye for such vulgar solidarities. 'All
men are mortal. Peter and John are men. Therefore Peter and John are
mortal,' he concludes; but that is his nearest and most vivacious
approach to historical particulars, and his cell is broad enough to
contain all that he needs for his processes and ends. He finds enough
and to spare, ready prepared to his hands, in the casual, rude,
unscientific observations and spontaneous distinctions of the vulgar.
His generalizations are obtained from their hasty abstractions. It has
never occurred to him, till now, that he must begin with criticising
these _terms_; that he must begin by making a new and scientific
terminology, which shall correspond to _terms in nature_, and not be
air-lines merely;--that he must take pains to collect them himself,
from severest scrutiny of particulars, before ever he can arrive at
'the notions of nature,' the universal notions, which differ from the
spontaneous specific notions of men, and their chimeras; before ever
he can put man into his true relations with nature, before ever he can
teach him to speak the word which she responds to,--the words of her
dictionary--the word which is _power_.
This is, in fact, the first time that the philosopher has undertaken
to go abroad. It is the first time he has ever been in the army.
Softly, invisibly, he goes. There is nothing to show that he is there.
As modestly, as unnoticed, as the Times 'own correspondent,' amid all
the clang and tumult, the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, he
goes. But he is there notwithstanding. There is no breath of
scholasticism, no perfume of the cell, that the most vigorous and
robust can perceive, in his battle. The scene unwinds with all its
fierce reality, undimmed by the pale cast of thought: the shout is as
wild, the din as fearful, the martial fury rises, as if the old heroic
poet had it still in hand.
But it is not the poet's voice that you hear, bursting forth into
those rhythmical ecstasies of heroic passion,--unless that faint tone
of exaggeration,--that slight prolonging of it, be his. That mad joy
in human blood, that wolfish glare, that lights the hero's eye, gets
no reflection in his: those fiendish boasts are not from _his_ lips.
Through all the frenzy of that demoniacal scene, he is still himself,
with all his _human_ sense about him. Through all the crowded
incidents of that day of blood--into which he condenses, with dramatic
license, the siege and assault of the city, the conquest and plunder
of it, and the conflict in the open field,--he is keeping watch on his
hero. He is eyeing him, and sketching him, as critically as if he were
indeed an entomological or botanical specimen. He is making a specimen
of him, for scientific purposes,--not 'a preservation,'--he does not
think much of dried specimens in science. He proposes to dismiss the
logical Peter and John, and the logical man himself, that abstract
notion which the metaphysicians have been at loggerheads about so
long. It is the true heroism,--it is the sovereign flower which he is
in search of. This specimen that he is taking here will, indeed, go by
the board. He is taking him on his negative table. But for _that_
purpose,--in order to get him on his 'table of rejections,' it is
necessary to take him _alive_. The question is of government, of
supreme power, and universal _suffrage_, of the abnegation of reason,
of the annihilation of judgment, in behalf of a superiority which has
been understood, heretofore, to admit of _no_ question. The question
is of awe and reverence, and worship, and submission. The Poet has to
put his sacrilegious hand through the dust that lies on antique time,
through the sanctity of prescription and time-honoured usage, through
'mountainous error' 'too highly heaped for truth to overpeer,' in
order to make this point in his scientific table. And he wishes to
blazon it a little. He will pin up this old exploded hero--this legacy
of barbaric ages, to the ages of human advancement--in all his
actualities, in all the heroic splendours of his original, without
'diminishing one dowle that's in his plume.'
But this retrospect has not yet reached its limit. It is not enough to
go back, in the unravelling of this business, to the full-grown hero
on the field of victory. 'For that which, in speculative philosophy,
corresponds to the cause in practical philosophy becomes the rule;'
and it is the Cure of the Common Weal, which the poet is proposing,
and having determined to proceed specially against Caius Marcius, or
against him _first_, he undertakes now to 'delve him to the root.' We
are already on the battle field; but before ever a stroke is struck
_there_, before he will attempt to show us the instinct of the warrior
in his _game_,--'he is a lion that I am proud to hunt,'--when all is
ready and just as the hunt is going to begin, he steals softly back to
Rome; he unlocks the hero's private dwelling, he lays open to us the
secrets of that domestic hearth, the secrets of that nursery in which
his hero had had his training; he shows us the breasts from which he
drew that martial fire; he produces the woman alive who sent him to
that field. [Act 1, Scene 3. _An apartment in the martial chieftain's
house; two women, 'on two low stools, sewing_.' 'There is where your
throne begins, whatever it be.'] In that exquisite relief which the
natural graces of youth and womanhood provide for it, in the young,
gentle, feminine wife, desolate in her husband's absence, starting at
the rumour of news from the camp, and driving back from her appalled
conception, the images which her mother-in-law's fearful speech
suggests to her,--in that so beautiful relief, comes out the picture
of the Roman matron, the woman in whom the martial instincts have been
educated and the gentler ones repressed, by the common sentiments of
her age and nation, the woman in whom the common standard of virtue,
the conventional virtue of her time, has annihilated the wife and the
mother.
_Virgilia_. Had he died in the business, madam, what then?
_Volumnia_. Then his good report should have been my son,
_I therein would have found issue_.
It is the multiplied force of a common instinct in the nation, it is
the pride of conquest in a whole people, erected into the place of
virtue and usurping all its sanctity, which has entered this woman's
nature and reformed its yielding principles. It is the _Martial_
Spirit that has subdued her, for she is virtuous and religious. It is
her people's god to whom she has borne her son, and in his temple she
has reared him.
But the poet is not satisfied with all this. It is not enough to
introduce us to the hero's mother and permit us to listen to her
confidential account of his birth and training. He will produce the
little Coriolanus himself--Coriolanus in germ--he will show us the
rudiments of those instincts, which his unscientific education has
stimulated into such monstrous 'o'ergrowth' (but _not_ enlightened),
so that the hero on the battle-field who is winning there the oaken
crown, which he will transmit if he can to his posterity, is only,
after all, a boy overgrown,--a boy with his _boyishness unnaturally
prolonged by his culture_,--the impersonation of the childishness of a
childish time,--the crowned impersonation of the instinct which is
SOVEREIGN in an age of instinct. He shows us the drum and the sword in
the nursery, and the boy who would rather look at the military parade
than his schoolmaster;--he shows us the little viperous egg of a hero
torturing and tearing the butterfly, with his 'confirmed countenance,
in one of his father's moods.'
Surely we have reached 'the grub' at last, 'the creeping thing' that
will have one day imperial armies in its wings. And we return from
this little excursion to the field again, in time for the battle; and
when we see the tiger in the man let loose _there_, and the boy's
father comes out in one of his _own_ moods, that we may note it the
better; we begin to observe where we are in the human history, and
what age of the Advancement of Learning it is that this poet is
driving at so stedfastly, and trying to get dated; and whether it is
indeed one from which the advancing ages of Learning can accept the
bourne of the human wisdom, the limit of that advance.
'And to speak _truly_ [and that after all _is_ the best way of
speaking] _Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi_.'
'Those times are the ancient times, when the _world_ is ancient and
not those we account ancient by a computation _backward_ from
_ourselves_.'--_Advancement of Learning_. But that was put down in a
book in which we have only general statements, very wise indeed, and
both new and true, most exactly true, but not ready for practice, as
the author stops to tell us, and it is practice he is aiming at. That
is from a book in which we have only 'the husks and shells of
sciences, _all the kernel_ being forced out,' as the author informs
us, 'by the _torture and press_ of the method.' But it was a method
which saved them, notwithstanding. This is the book that contains the
'nuts,' and _this_ is the kernel that goes in that particular shell or
a corner of it, '_Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi_.'
There, on the spot, he shows us the process by which a king,--an
historic king,--is made. He detects and brings out and blazons, the
moment in which the inequality of fortune begins, in the division of
the spoils of victory. His hero is _not_, as he takes pains to tell
us, covetous,--_unless_ it be a sin to covet honour, if it be, he is
the most offending soul alive;--it is because he is not mercenary,
that his soldiers will enrich him. The poet shows us where the throne
begins, and the machinery of that engine which the earth shrinks from
when it moves. On his stage, it is the moment in which, the soldiers
raise their victorious leader from his feet, and carry him in triumph
above them. We are there at the ceremony, for this is selected,
illuminated history; this, too, is what he calls 'visible history,'
but amid all those martial acclamations and plaudits, the philosopher
contrives to get in a word.
'He that has effected his _good will_, has o'ertaken my act.'
From the field he tracks his hero to the chair of state. First we have
the news of the victory in the city, and its effect:--
'I'll report it
Where _senators_ shall mingle tears with smiles;
Where great _patricians_ shall attend, and _shrug_;
I' the end admire; where ladies shall be frighted,
And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the _dull tribunes_,
That, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours,
Shall say against their hearts, We thank the gods
_Our Rome_ hath such a soldier.'
Then we have the hero's return--the conqueror's reception; first in
the city whose battle he has won, and afterwards his reception in the
city he has conquered. Here is the latter:--
'Your native town _you_ entered _like a post_,
And had no welcomes home; but he returns,
Splitting the air with noises.
And _patient fools_,
_Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear_
WITH GIVING HIM GLORY.'
'A goodly city is this Antium! City,
'Tis _I_ that made thy widows; many an heir
Of _these fair edifices, 'fore my wars_
Have I heard groan and droop. Then know me not,
Lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones,
In _puny battle slay me_.' [--_know me not--lest_--'
'Let us kill him, and we will have _corn_, at our own price.']
But the Poet does not forget that it is the proof of the military
virtue, as well as the history of the military power, that he has
undertaken; 'the touch of its nobility,' as he himself words it. He is
trying it by his own exact scientific standard; he is putting the test
to it which the new philosophy, which is the philosophy of nature,
authorises.
For, in truth, this philosopher, this civilian, is a little jealous of
this simple virtue of valour, which he finds in his time, as in the
barbaric ages, still in such esteem, as 'the chiefest virtue, and that
which most dignifies the haver.' He is of opinion, that there may be
some other profession, beside that of the sword, worth an honest man's
attention; that, if the world were more enlightened, there would be
another kind of glory, that would make 'the garland of war' shrivel.
He thinks that _Jupiter_, and _not Mars_, should reign supreme: that
there is another kind of distinction and leadership, better worth the
public esteem, better deserving the popular gratitude and reverence.
And when he has once taken an analysis of this kind in hand, he is not
going to permit any scruples of delicacy to impair the operation. He
will invade that graceful modesty in the hero, who shrinks from
hearing his exploits narrated. He will analyse that blush, and show us
chemically what its hue is made of. He will bring out those retiring
honours from the haze and mist which the vague, unanalytic, popular
notions, have gathered about them. Tucked up in scarlet, braided with
gold, under its forest of feathers, through all its pomp and blazonry,
through all its drums; and trumpets, and clarions, undaunted by the
popular cry, undaunted by that so potent word of 'patriotism' which
guards it from invasion, he will search it out.
For this purpose he will go a little nearer to it than is the heroic
poet's wont. When the city is wild with the news of this great
victory, and the streets are swarming at the tidings of the hero's
approach, he will take _his_ stand with _the family party_, and beckon
us to a place where we can listen to what is going on _there_, though
the heroics and the blank verse must halt for it.
The glee and fluster might appear to a cool spectator a little
undignified; but then we are understood to be, like Menenius, old
friends of the family, and too much carried away with the excitement
of the moment to be very critical.
_Volumnia_. Honourable Menenius, _my boy, Marcius_, approaches. For
the love of _Juno_, let's go.
_Men_. Ha! Marcius coming home!
_Vol_. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous _approbation_.
_Men. Take my cap, Jupiter_, and I thank thee. _Hoo_! Marcius coming
home?
_Two Ladies_. Nay, 't is true.
_Vol_. Look! Here's a letter from him; _the state_ hath another,
_his wife_ another, and I think there's one at home for _you_.
_Men_. I will make my very house reel to night:--A letter for me?
_The Wife_. Yes, certainly, there a letter for you; I saw it.
_Men_. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years'
health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician ... Is he
not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.
_The Wife_. Oh, no, no, no!
_The Mother_. Oh, he is wounded. I thank the gods for 't.
_Men_. So do I, too, if it be not too much:--_Brings a victory in
his pocket_: The wounds become him.
_Vol. On's brow_, Menenius: he comes the third time home with _the
oaken garland_.
_Men_.... Is the senate possessed of this?
_Vol_. Good ladies, let's go! Yes, yes, yes: the senate has letters
from the general, wherein he gives _my son_ the whole name of the
war.
_Valeria_. In truth, there's wondrous things spoke of him.
_Men_. Wondrous, ay, I warrant you...
_Vir_. The gods grant them true!
_Vol_. True? Pow wow!
_Men_. True? I'll be sworn they are true. Where's he wounded?
[To the Tribunes, who _come forward_.] Marcius is coming home: he
has--_more cause to be_--PROUD.--Where is he wounded?
_Vol_. I' the shoulder, and i' the left arm: _There will be large
cicatrices to shew the people_, when he shall stand FOR HIS PLACE.
He received in the repulse of _Tarquin_ seven hurts i' the body.
_Men. One_ in the neck, and _two_ in the thigh,--there's _nine_
that _I_ know.
_Vol_. He had, before this last expedition, _twenty-five_ wounds
upon him.
_Men_. Now it's _twenty-seven_: every gash was an enemy's grave.
[Of course there is no satire intended here at all. This is a Poet who
does not know what he is about.]
But now we come to the blank verse again; for at this moment the shout
that announces the hero's entrance is heard; and, mingling with it,
the martial tones of victory.
_shout and flourish._
Hark! the trumpets!
_Vol. These are the ushers of Marcius: before him_
He carries noise; _behind him he leaves tears_.
Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie;
Which being advanced, declines, and _then men die_.
Then comes the imposing military pageant. A sennet. Trumpets sound,
and enter the hero, '_crowned_' with his _oaken_ garland, sustained by
the generals on either hand, with the victorious soldiers, and a
herald proclaiming before him his victory.
_Herald_. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight
Within Corioli's gates: where he hath won
With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these
In honour follows Coriolanus:
Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!
But while Rome is listening to this great story, and the people are
shouting his name, the demi-god catches sight of his mother and of his
wife; and full of private duty and affection, he forgets his state,
his garland stoops, the conqueror is on his knee, in filial
submission. The woman had said truly, '_my boy_ Marcius is coming
home.' And when he greets the weeping Virgilia, who cannot speak but
with her tears, these are the words with which he measures that
_private joy_--
Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home,
That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,
_Such eyes_ the _widows_ in Corioli wear,
And _mothers_ that lack _sons_.
No; these are the Poet's words, rather--'such eyes.'
_Such_ eyes. It was the Poet who could look through the
barriers--those hitherto impervious barriers of an _enemy's town_, and
see in it, at that moment, eyes as beautiful--eyes that had been
'dove's eyes,' too, to those who had loved them, wet with other
tears,--mothers that loved _their_ sons, and 'lacked them'; it was the
Poet to whose _human_ sense those hard hostile walls dissolved and
cleared away, till he could see the Volscian wives clasping _their_
loves, as they 'came coffined home'; it was the Poet who dared to
stain the joy and triumph of that fond meeting, the glory and pride of
that triumphal entry, with those _human_ thoughts; it was he who heard
above the roll of the drum, and the swell of the clarions and
trumpets, and the shout of the rejoicing multitude above the herald's
voice--the groans of mortal anguish in the field, the cries of human
sorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked sons, the
greetings of wives whose loves '_came coffined home_.' And he does not
mind aggravating the intense selfishness, and narrowness, and
stolidity of these private passions and affections of the individual
to a truly unnatural and diabolical intensity, by charging on poor
Volumnia and Marcius his own reminiscences; as if they could have
dared to heighten their joy at that moment by counting its cost--as if
they could have looked in the face--as if they could have
comprehended, in its actual dimensions, the theme of their vulgar,
_narrow_, unlearned exultation. But this is a trick this author is
much given to, we shall find, when we come to study him carefully. He
is not scrupulous on such points. He has a tolerable sense of the
fitness of things, too. His dramatic conscience is as nice as another
man's; but he is always ready to sin against it, when he sees reason.
He is much like his own Mr. Slender in one respect, 'he will do
anything in reason'; and his theory of the Chief End of Man appears to
differ essentially from the one which our modern Doctors of '_Art_'
propound incidentally in their criticisms. It is the mother who cries,
when she catches the swell of the trumpets that announce her son's
approach--'_These_ are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries
noise.' It is the Poet who adds, _sotto voce, 'behind him he leaves
TEARS_.'
'You are three,' says Menenius, after some further prolongation of
these private demonstrations, addressing himself to the three
victorious generals--
You are three,
That Rome _should_ dote on: yet, _by the faith_ of _men_,
We _have_ some old crab-trees here at home, that will _not_
Be grafted to your relish. Yet WELCOME, WARRIORS:
We call a _nettle_ but a _nettle_; and
The _faults_ of fools, but _folly_.
But the herald is driving on the crowd; and considering how very
public the occasion is, and how very, very private and personal all
this chat is, it does appear to have stopped the way long enough. Thus
hurried, the hero gives hastily a hand 'to HIS WIFE and MOTHER' [stage
direction], but stops to say a word or two more, which has the merit
of being at least to the POET'S purpose, though the common-weal may
appear to be lost sight of in the HERO'S a little; and that delicacy
and reserve of manner, that modesty of nature, which is the
characteristic of this Poet's art, serves here, as elsewhere, to
disguise the internal continuities of the poetic design. The careless
eye will not track it in these finer touches. 'Where some
stretched-mouth rascal' would have roared you out his prescribed
moral, 'outscolding Termagant' with it, the Poet, who is the poet of
truth, and who would have such fellows 'whipped' out of the sacred
places of Art, with a large or small cord, as the case may be, is
content to bring in his '_delicate burdens_,' or to keep sight of
them, at least, with some such reference to them as this--
'Ere in _our own house_ I do shade my head,
The good patricians must be visited;
From whom I have received not only greetings
But with them change of honours'--[_change_.]
That is his visit to the state-house which he is speaking of. It is
the Capitol which is put down in _his_ plan of the city on his way to
his own house. 'The state has a letter from him, and his wife another;
and I think there is one for you, too.'
Volumnia understands that delicate intimation as to _the change_ of
honours, and in return, takes occasion to express to him, on the spot,
her views about the consulship, and the use to which the new
cicatrices are to be converted.
Coriolanus replies to this in words that admit, as this Poet's words
often do, of a double construction; for the Poet is, indeed, lurking
under all this. He is always present, and he often slips in a word for
himself, when his characters are busy, and thinking of their own parts
only. He is very apt to make use of occasions for emphasis, to put in
_one word_ for his speakers, and _two_ for himself. It is irregular,
but he does not stand much upon precedents; it was the only way he had
of writing his life then--
'Know, good mother,
I had rather be _their servant in my way_,
Than _sway with them in theirs_.
_Cominius. On, to_ THE CAPITOL.'
[_Flourish Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before. The Tribunes
remain._]
And when the great pageant has moved on 'in state, as before'--when
the shouts of the people, and the triumphal swell and din, have died
away, this is the manner in which our two tribunes look at each other.
They know their voices would not make so much as a ripple, at that
moment, in the tide of that great sea of popular ignorance, which it
is their business to sway,--the tide which is setting all one way
then, in one of _its_ monstrous swells, and bearing every living thing
with it,--the tide which is taking the military hero '_On to_ THE
CAPITOL.' But though they cannot then oppose it, they can note it. And
it is thus that they register that popular confirmation at home, of
the soldier's vote on the field.
It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its living
outline, composed in that 'charactery' which lays the past and future
open. It is a picture good for the Roman hero's entry; 'and were now
the general of our gracious empress, as in _good time he may_, from
Ireland coming, bringing _rebellion_ broached _on his sword_'--would
it, or would it not, suit him?
It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its main
feature, for all the ages, at least of a brutish popular ignorance, of
a merely instinctive human growth and formation; but it is a picture
taken from the life,--caught,--detained with the secret of that
palette, whose secret none has yet found, and the detail is all, not
_Roman_, but, _Elizabethan_. Those '_variable complexions_,' that one
sees, 'smothering the stalls, bulks, windows, filling the leads,' and
roofs, even to the 'ridges,' all agreeing in one expression, are
Elizabethan. It is an Elizabethan crowd that we have got into, in some
way, and it is worth noting if it were only for that. There goes 'the
seld shown flamen, _puffing_ his way to _win a vulgar station_,' here
is a 'veiled dame' who lets us see that 'war of white and damask in
her nicely gawded cheeks,' a moment;--look at that 'kitchen malkin,'
peering over the wall there with 'her richest lockram' 'pinned on her
reechy neck,' eyeing the hero as he passes; and look at this poor baby
here, this Elizabethan baby, saved, conserved alive, crying himself
'into a _rapture_' while his 'prattling nurse' has ears and eyes for
the hero only, as 'she chats him.' Look at them all, for every
creature you see here, from 'the seld shown flamen' to the 'kitchen
malkin,' belongs soul and body to 'our gracious Empress,' and Essex
and Raleigh are still winning their garlands of the war,--that is when
the scene is taken, but not when it was put in its place and framed in
this composition; for their game was up ere then. England preferred
old heroes and their claims to new ones. 'I fear there will a worse
come in his place,' was the cautious instinct.
_Bru_. All tongues speak of him, and the _bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him_: Your _prattling_ nurse
_Into a rapture lets her baby cry_,
While she chats him: the kitchin malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck.
_Clambering the walls_ to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,
Are smother'd up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed
With _variable complexions; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens
Do press among the popular throng, and puff
To win a vulgar station_: our veil'd dames
Commit the war of white and damask, in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil
Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
Were slyly crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.
_Sic_. On the sudden,
I warrant him consul.
_Bru. Then our office may,
During his power, go sleep._
_Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours
.... but will
Lose that he hath won._
_Cru. In that there's comfort._
_Sic_. Doubt not, the _commoners, for whom we stand_,--
[While they resolve upon the measures to be taken, which we shall note
elsewhere, a messenger enters.]
_Bru_. What's the matter?
_Mess_. You are sent for to the Capitol. 'Tis thought,
That _Marcius_ shall be consul: I have seen
The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind
To hear him speak: The matrons flung their gloves,
_Ladies_ and _maids_ the _scarfs_ and _handkerchiefs_,
Upon him as he passed: _the nobles bended,
As to Jove's statue; and the commons made
A shower, and thunder_, with their _caps, and shouts_:
I never saw the like.
_Bru. Lets to the Capitol;
And carry_ with us _ears and eyes for_ THE TIME,
_But hearts_ for the EVENT.
[And let us to the Capitol also, and hear the civic claim of the oaken
garland, the military claim to dispose of the _common-weal_, as set
forth by one who is himself a general 'commander-in-chief' of Rome's
armies, and see whether or no the Poet's own doubtful cheer on the
battle-field has any echo in this place.]
_Com. It is held,
That valour is the chiefest virtue_, and
_Most dignifies the haver_: IF IT BE,
_The man I speak_ of cannot in the world
Be _singly_ counterpois'd.
[If it be? And he goes on to tell a story which fits, in all its
points, a great hero, a true chieftain, brave as heroes of old
romance, who lived when this was written, concluding thus--]
_Com_. He _stopped the fliers_;
And, by his rare example, made the coward
Turn terror into sport: _as waves before
A vessel under sail_, SO MEN OBEY'D,
_And fell below his stem_: his sword, (death's stamp.)
Where it did mark, it took; _from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries_: alone he enter'd
The mortal gate o'the city, which he painted
With shunless destiny, aidless came off,
And with a sudden re-enforcement struck
Corioli, like a planet: now, ALL'S HIS:
When by and by the din of war 'gan pierce
His ready sense: then straight _his doubled spirit_
Re-quicken'd what in flesh was fatigate,
And to the battle came he; where he did
_Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if
'Twere a perpetual spoil_: and _till we call'd
Both field and city ours, he never stood
To ease his breast with panting_.
_Men_. WORTHY MAN!
_First Sen. He cannot but with measure fit the honours
Which we devise him._
[One more quality, however, his pleader insists on, as additional
proof of this '_fitness_' for though it is a negative one, its
opposite had not been reckoned among the kingly virtues, and the poet
takes some pains to bring that opposite quality into relief,
throughout, by this negative.]
_Com_. Our _spoils_ he kicked at;
And look'd upon things precious, as they were
The common muck o' the world.
_Men_. HE'S RIGHT NOBLE;
_Let him be call'd for._
_First Sen. Call for Coriolanus._
_Off. He doth appear._
At the opening of this scene, two officers appeared on the stage,
'_laying cushions_,' for this is one of those specimens of the new
method of investigation applied to the noblest subjects, 'which
represents, as it were, _to the eye_, the whole order of the
invention,' and into the Capitol stalks now the casque, for this is
that 'step from the casque to the cushion' which the Poet is
considering in the abstract; but it does not suit his purpose to treat
of it in these abstract terms merely, because 'reason cannot be so
sensible.' This, too, is one of those grand historic moments which
this new, select, prepared history must represent to the eye in all
its momentous historic splendour, for this is the kind of popular
instruction which reproduces the past, which represents the historic
event, not in perspective, but as present. And this is the 'business,'
and this is the play in which we are told 'action is eloquence, and
the eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears.'
The seats of state are prepared for him. 'Call _Coriolanus_,' is the
senate's word. The conqueror's step is heard. 'He does appear.'
_Men_. The senate, Coriolanus, are well pleased
To make thee consul.
_Cor_. I do owe them still
My life, and services.
_Men_. IT THEN REMAINS,
THAT YOU DO SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE.
_Cor_. I do beseech you,
_Let me overleap that custom_.
_Sic. Sir, the people
Must have their voices; neither will they bate
One jot of their ceremony._
_Men. Put them not to't_:--[his friendly adviser says.]
Pray you, go fit you _to the custom_; and
Take to you, _as your predecessors have_,
Your honour, with _your form_.
_Cor_. It is a part
That I shall blush in acting, _and might well
Be taken from the people_.
_Bru. Mark you that!_
_Cor_. To brag unto them,--_Thus I did, and thus_;--
Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,
As if I had received _them for the hire_
Of _their breath only_.