VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.
'My boy _Marcius_ approaches.'
'Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field.'
Is not the ground which _Machiavel_ wisely and largely discourseth
concerning governments, that the way to establish and _preserve_
them, is to reduce them _ad principia_; a rule in religion and
nature, _as well as_ in civil administration? [Again.] Was not
_the Persian_ magic a _reduction_ or correspondence of the
_principles_ and _architectures_ of nature to the rules and policy
of governments?'--['_Questions to be asked_.']--_Advancement of
Learning_.
It is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which
the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to
complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his
time 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver';
the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of
nobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal
fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human
welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom--no matter what
'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.
He makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is
effecting in the hitherto unanalysed, ill-defined, popular notions,
and received and unquestioned axioms of practice--that separation of
the instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called
heroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and nobility,
the true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual
human nature and in the common-weal.
That _martial_ virtue has been under criticism and suspicion torn the
beginning of this action. It was shown from the first--from that
ground and point of observation which the sufferings of the diseased
common-weal made for it--in no favourable light. It was branded in the
first scene, in the person of its Hero, as 'a dog to the commonalty.'
It is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that
title for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively
only, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that--eating
the poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and gnawing his
vitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up
from the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was
brought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart
of the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the
civil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men
enthrone. It was brought out from the first--it came tramping on in
the first act, in the first scene--with its sneer at the commons'
distress, longing to make 'a quarry of the _quartered_ slaves, as
high' as the plumed hero of it 'could prick his lance'; and that, too,
because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the
common notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle
of new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable
teacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their
rulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive
wholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.'
And it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the
threat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry
into effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an
insurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to
know.
But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle,
which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home,
becomes with the change of circumstances--patriotism. But the Poet
does not lose sight of its identity under this change. This love, that
looks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so
haughtily at questions about corn, and the price of 'coals,' and the
price of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian
gates--this love, that sneers at the hunger and misery of the commons
at home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the
_common_ enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind
of _love_, to say the least of it.
In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of
his story offers him--this quality which the hostilities of nations
deify--he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that
virtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a
larger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own
personality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 'twere a
perpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric
ages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of
it--the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out
to; while in the name of _country_ it shows itself 'from face to foot
a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,'
undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts
it, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and
nobility which he has already exhibited at home.
That sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the
incident; it is the principle of _acquisition_, it is the natural
principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of,
that nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with,
too--at war with in the parts--one that she is forever opposed to, and
conquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms--with her law
of the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation';
it is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the
state to set bounds to in the human constitution--which gets branded
with _other_ names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp
and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle
which predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed 'dog' of the
commonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth
that preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish
on the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the
captured city--those matchless deeds of valor--the consummation for
_Coriolanus_ in _Corioli_, for 'the _conqueror_ in the _conquest_,'
is--'NOW ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is--'He never
stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field
and city--OURS.'
The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of
this LOVE, he will have the heart out of it--this love that stops so
short with geographic limits,--that changes with the crossing of a
line into a demon from the lowest pit.
But it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly-qualified,
'illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has
seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when
he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood
undried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors
of the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless
grace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while _his_
Coriolanus, ere he will take food or wine in _his_ Corioli, gives
orders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally--the poor man
at whose house he lay--shall be saved, when he is so weary with
slaying Volscians that 'his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak
his poor friend's name.
He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply
than ever--this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town.
CORIOLANUS of CORIOLI. _Marcius_, plain _Caius Marcius_, now no more.
He will think it treason--even in the conquered city he will resent
it--if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or
forget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town--the
town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries--that,
with that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he
scorned the soldiers who took 'spoons'--has clothed him with his
purple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear
any longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty
complexity of the unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal
unscientific _opinion_ of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms,
which the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with
his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew--not here
only--which he will fill on another page also, 'approaching his
particular more near'--with all its fresh, recent historic detail,
with all its hideous, barbaric detail.
He is jealous,--this new Poet of his kind,--he is jealous of this love
that makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons,
under this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes
to.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even
_narrower_ than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he
contrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce
its triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering
pageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base
and _avaricious_, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its
hire on its brows.
_Menenius_. Brings a victory in his pocket.
_Volumnia_. On's brows Menenius.
He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the
cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those
private whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol
stand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to 'our own house.'
Nay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him
on his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that
_he should hide_, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And
though he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this
return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people
to set them down, to a disinterested love for his _country_, it is to
this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to
his purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds
confounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding
here, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the
populace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal
differences, the original differences, the difference of things, the
simplicity of nature herself divides them, makes two of them,
two,--not one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here,
which he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which make such
mischief in the human life, and he is severely separating it--he is
separating the martial virtue--from the true heroism, 'with the mind,
that divine fire.' He is separating this kind of heroism from that
cover under which it insinuates itself into governments, with which it
makes its most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.
He is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal, that
principle which recognises and embraces the weal of others as its own,
that principle which enters into and constitutes each man's own
noblest life, is a thing of another growth and essence, a thing which
needs a different culture from any that the Roman Volumnia could give
it, a culture which unalytic, barbaric ages--wanting in all the
scientific arts--could not give it.
He will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism
amounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while
there is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the
lower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He
will show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the
hire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this
point too, as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic,
theatric, illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires,
and which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will have his
'transient hieroglyphics,' his _tableaux vivants_, his 'dumb-shows' to
aid him here also, because this, too, is for the spectators--this,
too, is for the audience whose eyes are more learned than their ears.
It is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not one who
is merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 'He has that in
his face which men love--_authority_.' 'As waves before a vessel under
sail, so men obey him and fall below his stern.' The Romans have
stripped off his wings and turned him out of the city gates, but the
heroic instinct of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He
carries with him that which will collect new armies, and make him
their victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and hostility
of nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation is not gone so
long as the unscientific ages last. The principle of his heroism and
nobility has only been developed in new force by this opposition. He
will have a new degree; he will purchase a new patent of it; he will
_forge_ himself a new and _better_ name, for 'the patricians are
called _good_ citizens.' He will forget Corioli; _Coriolanus_ now no
more, he will conquer _Rome_, and incorporate that henceforth in his
name. He will make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true
citizenship and membership of the larger whole, in his private
subjection to it,--not by emerging from his particular into the self
that comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by subduing the
whole to his particular, the greater to the less, the whole to the
part. He will triumph over the Common-weal, and bind his brow with a
new garland. That is his magnanimity. He will take it from without, if
they will not let him have it within. He will turn against that
country, which he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian
hearts have felt so long. 'There's some among you have _beheld_ me
fighting,' he says. 'Come, _try upon yourselves_ what you have _seen
me_?' He is only that same narrow, petty, pitiful private man he
always was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of the Roman
legions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right his single
wrong, or because the people would not let him have _all_ from them,
he comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel, and sits down,
Captain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.
'This morning,' says Menenius, after the reprieve, 'this morning for
ten thousand of your throats, I'd not have given a doit.' But this is
only the same 'good citizen' we saw in the first scene, who longed to
make a quarry of _thousands of the quartered slaves_, as high as he
could prick his lance! That was 'the altitude of his virtue' _then_.
It is the same citizenship with its conditions altered.
So well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work
throughout--so completely has he filled the Roman story with his
'richer and bolder meanings,' that when the old, familiar scene, which
makes the denouement of the Roman myth, comes out at last in the
representation, it comes as the crowning point of this Poet's own
invention. It is but the felicitous artistic consummation of the
piece, when this hero, in his conflicting passions and instincts,
gives at last, to one private affection and impulse, the State he
would have sacrificed to another; when he gives to his boy's prattling
inanities, to his wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a
shade less on her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's
scolding eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the
gods, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanctities, with
all its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reeking, smoking
holocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the principle of the
citizenship that was 'accounted GOOD' when this play began, when this
play was written.
'He was a kind of nothing, _titleless_,--
Till he had forged himself _a name_ i' the fire
_Of burning Rome_.'
That is his modest answer to the military friend who entreats him to
spare the city.
'Though soft-conscienced men may be content to say _it was for his
country_, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud.'
Surely that starving citizen who found himself at the beginning of
this play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legislation, and in
danger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide of the truth, after
all, in his surmise as to the principles of _the heroic statesmanship_
and _warfare_, when he ventured thus early on that suggestion. The
State banished him, as an enemy, and he came back with a Volscian army
to make good that verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel
than his law had been within. It was not starving only that he had
voted for. '_Let them hang_,' ay--(_ay_) 'and BURN TOO,' was 'the
disposition' they had 'thwarted',--measuring 'the quarry of _the
quartered slaves_,' which it _would_ make, 'would the nobility but lay
aside their ruth.' That was the disposition, that was the ignorance,
the blind, brutish, demon ignorance, that 'in good time' they had
thwarted. They had ruled it out and banished it from their city on
pain of death, forever; they had turned it out in its single
impotence, and it came back '_armed_;' for this was one of rude
nature's monarchs, and outstretched heroes.
Yet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has made war without
so long, which has put Corioli and Rome in such confusion, has its
warfare within also, and it is there that the hero is beaten and
slain. For there is no state or fixed sovereignty in his soul. Both
sides of the city rise at once; there is a fearful battle, and the
red-eyed Mars is dethroned. The end which he has pursued at such a
cost is within his reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city
lies there before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is
steel enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it. For
there is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general within to
put down the conflict of changeful, _warring selfs_, to suppress the
mutiny of mutually opposing, mutually _annihilating_ selfish dictates.
In vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single passion
has its hour, this 'would-do' changes. With the impression the passion
changes, and the purpose that is _passionate_ must alter with it,
unless pure obstinacy remain in its place, and fulfil the annulled
dictate. For _such_ purpose, one person of the scientific drama tells
us--one who had had some dramatic experience in it,--
'is but _the slave to memory_,
Of violent birth, and poor validity,
Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree,
But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
What to ourselves _in passion_ we propose,
_The passion ending doth the purpose lose_.'
That is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes to reduce
his philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert some sixteen of
his lines quietly into the court performance: that is his _verbal_
account of it; but _his_ action, too, speaks louder and more
eloquently than his words.
The principle of identity and the true self is wanting in this
so-called _self_-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace
principle, the principle of _state_ within and without.
'_To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as_ the night the day,
_Thou canst not then be false to any man_'
That is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not the
passionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood, with his
resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of _conscientious_
thought; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet, but the man
who aspires to make his single humours the law of the universal world,
in whom the poet will show now this want of state and sovereignty.
He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against
Menenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, '_his eye red_ as
'twould burn Rome'--a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a
city. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,'
is the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked
heart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered
in him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this
superhuman growth and assumption of a divine authority and honour in
the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of
philosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and
show the slave that is hidden under it, for it is no _man_ at all,
but, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, '_passion's slave_,'
'a pipe for fortune's finger _to sound what stop she please_.' For
that _state_,--that command--depends on that which '_changes_,'--
fortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution
within it. It is its nature to change. The single passion cannot
engross the large, many-passioned, complex nature, so rich and various
in motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys--the single
passion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning
passion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come.
You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make
it look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned
alone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal
red. It was strong enough to defy God and all his creatures; it would
annul all worlds but that one which it was god of.
This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to
interpret to us _the thinker's_ inaction, the thinker's irresolution,
for 'it is _conscience_ that makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man
who is resolute enough. _His will_ is not 'puzzled.' _His_ thoughts,
_his_ scruples will not divide and destroy his purpose. _Here_ is THE
UNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his
father. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the
church.'
'To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.
I _dare_ damnation. To this point I stand
That both the worlds _I_ give to negligence,
Let come what comes, _only_ I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for _my_ father.' [_Only_.]
That is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the
principle of vindictiveness said when it was _you_, when it mastered
you, and called _itself_ by your name. Ay, it has many names, and many
lips; but it is always _one_. That was what it said an hour ago; and
now it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you
are there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery,
belying the identity which your visible form--which your _human_ form,
was made to promise,--a slave,--a pipe for _fortune's_ finger. This is
the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and
'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections,
'after every species of rejection,'--the _affirmation_ is, that there
is but one principle that is _human_, and that is GOOD yesterday,
to-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human
form, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to
his yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he
cannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in
us all--that is the self of _reason_ and conscience, not passion.
But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of
this scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'--this poor
and private passion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its
head, in the place of God, but lacking His 'mercy,'--this passion of
the petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its
monstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on
these hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly
fangs--those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture
and rend our daily lives--exposed in this great solar microscope,
striking the _common-weal_,--as for this petty, usurping passion,
there is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.
Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which
yesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had
offended him,' that was his word,--which yesterday he would have burnt
in it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that
beleaguers Rome it comes--towards the pavilion where the Volscian
captain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course.
To other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad
in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them;
but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain
trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and
doom them, in his over-mastering passion of revenge, with its heroic
infinity of mastery triumphant in him,--he could _think_ of them and
doom them; but the impressions of _the senses_ are more vivid, and the
passions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the
light of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien
and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a
'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as
one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,--much such
a one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian
roofs.
But to this usurping 'private,' to this man of passion and affection,
and not reason--this man of private and particular motives only, and
blind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it
outweighs Rome and all her weal--'it is worth of senators and
patricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land
full'--it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.
His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as
that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its
magnetic sphere.
For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and
instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a
sphere which does not embrace plebeians,--which crushes Volscians with
clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its
exultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are
exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in
the finer impulses, in the nobler affections of the particular and
private nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial
conquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine
ambition fired to have _all_. It is instinct, but it is the instinct
of the human; it is 'conservation with _advancement_' that he is
blindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights
that reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities
that affection borrows from it.
And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,'
scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as
no philosophic school was ever before able to pronounce. Even here, on
this sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he
will not cramp its utterance--he will give it leave to speak, in all
its tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its
poetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at
the moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive,
undrenched in humours and affections--for the motive of the weal that
is common, and not for the motive of that which is private and
exclusive.
In vain the hero struggles with his yielding passion, and seeks to
retain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment which he himself
describes as 'a gosling's instinct,' and seeks to subdue it. In vain
he rallies his pride, and says, 'Let it be _virtuous_ to be
_obstinate_'; and determines to stand 'as if a man were author of
himself, and knew no other kin.' His mother kneels. It is but a frail,
aged woman kneeling to the victorious chieftain of the Volscian hosts;
but to him it is 'as if _Olympus_ to _a mole-hill_ stooped in
supplication.' His boy looks at him with an eye in which great Nature
speaks, and says, 'Deny not'; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of
the beloved, he hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the
Poet's art, in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach
the 'grub' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt from him. He is
his young boy's father--he is his fair young wife's beloved.
'O a kiss, long _as_ my exile, sweet _as_ my revenge.'
There's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there is another
there, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a boy--his own
mother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that schools and lessons
him; it is she that conquers him. It _was_ 'her boy,' after all--it
was her boy still, that was 'coming home.'
Well might Menenius say--
'_This Volumnia_ is worth of consuls, senators, patricians,
A city full; of tribunes _such as you_,
A sea and land full.'
But let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as we find
it; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in its
connections, when once we 'have heard the argument,' we shall not find
anything in it to spare. But we must not forget that this is still
'the election,' the ignorant election of the common-weal which is
under criticism, and though this election has been revoked in the play
already, and this is a banished man we are trying here, there was a
play in progress when this play was played, in which that revocation
was yet to come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should
be considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so that _the
principle of 'the election_' need never again be called in question,
so that the revolution should end in the state, and not in the
principle of revolution.
'My wife comes foremost; then the honoured mould
Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand
The grand-child to her blood. But, out, _affection_!
All bond and privilege of nature, break!
_Let it be virtuous to be obstinate_.--
What is that curtsey worth? or those doves' eyes,
Which can _make gods forsworn_?
['He speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man
of infirmity.']
'I melt, _and am not_
Of STRONGER EARTH than others.--My mother bows;
As if Olympus to a molehill should
In supplication nod: and my young boy
Hath an aspect of intercession, which
Great Nature cries, 'Deny not!'--Let the Volsces
Plough Rome, and harrow Italy; 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.
These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.
_Vir_.
The sorrow that delivers us thus changed,
Makes you think so.
[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed. But it is with
sorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and puts upon it the blame
of his loss of love. But that is just the kind of battery he is not
provided for. His resolution wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that
fierce revengeful man is gone already, and forgot to leave his
part--the words he was to speak are wanting.]
_Cor_. Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, _and I am out_,
_Even to a full disgrace_. Best of my flesh,
Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,
For that, Forgive our Romans.--O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgin'd it e'er since.--You gods! I prate,
And the _most noble mother of the world_
Leave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [_Kneels_.]
Of _the deep duty_ more _impression_ show
_Than that of common sons_.
_Vol_. O, stand up bless'd!
Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint,
I kneel before thee; and unproperly
_Show duty, as mistaken_--
[Note it--'as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning described
elsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and must, therefore,
pray in aid of similes.]
--and improperly
Show DUTY, as mistaken all the while
Between the child and parent.
[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is represented
in the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points us to this
hieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in her person, and the
rebel interprets for us. It is the violated law that stoops for
pardon.]
_Cor_. What is this?
Your knees to me? to _your corrected son_?
_Then_ let the pebbles on the hungry beach
Fillip the stars; _then_ let the _mutinous_ winds
Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun;
_Murdering impossibility, to make
What cannot be, slight work_.
_Vol_. Thou _art my warrior;
I holp to frame thee_.
[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero--the Roman hero in
germ--that she speaks--there is more than her Roman part _here_, when
she adds--]
_Vol_. This is a poor epitome of yours,
Which _by the interpretation_ of _full time_
May show, _like all, yourself_.
[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to utter, what
prayer the true hero can dare to pray, through this faltering,
fluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, 'that whatsoever god who led
him' is failing him, and the flaws of impulse are swaying him to and
fro, and darkening him for ever.]
_Cor._ 'The god of soldiers
_With the consent of_ SUPREME JOVE,'--[the Capitolian, the
god of state]--'inform
_Thy thoughts_ with NOBLENESS;'--[_inform thy thoughts._]
'that thou may'st prove
_The shame_ unvulnerable, and stick i'the wars
Like a great sea-mark, _standing every flaw_,
And saving those that eye thee.'
[But _this_ hero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive nature
is--]
'Not of a woman's tenderness to be,
Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.
I have sat too long.'
But the mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes
the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved.
Yes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction and brief
summing up of 'this Volumnia' and her history, is the true one. She is
very potent in the business of the state, whether you take her in her
first literal acceptation, as the representative mother, or whether
you take her in that symbolical and allusive comprehension, to which
the emphasis on the name is not unfrequently made to point, as 'the
nurse and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the
former of its nobility, who _in_-forms their thoughts with nobleness,
such nobleness, and such notions of it as they have, and who fits them
for the place they are to occupy in the body of the common-weal.
Menenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative importance
of _this_ figure among those which the dumb-show of this play
exhibits. Among the 'transient hieroglyphics' which the diseased
common-weal produces on the scientific stage, when the question of its
CURE is the question of the Play--in that great crowd of forms, in
that moving, portentous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and
tribunes, and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene--there are
none more significant than these two, whom we saw at first 'seated on
two low stools, sewing'; these two of the wife and mother--the
commanding mother, and the 'gracious silence.'
'This Volumnia'--yes, let her school him, for it is from her school
that he has come: let her conquer him, for she is the conserver of
this harm. It is she who makes of it a tradition. To its utmost bound
of consequences, she is the mother of it, and accountable to God and
man for its growth and continuance. Consuls, and senators, and
patricians, and tribunes, such as we have, are powerless without her,
are powerless against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of
it, she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her
conquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now. This play is
the Cure of the Common-weal, the convulsed and dying Common-weal; and
whether the assault be from within or without, this woman must undo
her work. The tribunes have sent for her now: she must go forth
without shrinking, and slay her son. She was the true mother; she
trained him for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of
him, but that craved a noble cunning; she was not instructed in it;
she must pay the penalty of her ignorance--the penalty of her
traditions--and slay him now. There is no help for it, for she has
made with her traditions a thing that no common-weal can bear.
Woe for this Volumnia! Woe for the common-weal whose chiefs she has
reared, whose great men and 'GOOD CITIZENS' she has made! Woe for her!
Woe for the _common_-weal, for _her_ boy approaches! The land is
groaning and shaken; the faces of men gather blackness; the clashing
of arms is heard in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are
blazing. Great Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is
coming home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the
son of her RELIGION, is _coming home_.
'O mother, mother!
What hast thou done?....
O my mother, mother! O,
You have won _a happy victory to Rome_,--
But for your son--'
Alas for him, and his gentle blood, and noble breeding, and his
patrician greatness! Woe for the unlearned mother's son, who has made
him great with such a training, that Rome's weal and his, Rome's
greatness and his, must needs contend together--that 'Rome's happy
victory' must needs be the blaze that shall darken him for ever!
Yet he storms again, with something like his old patrician fierceness;
and yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler and tamer than he
was, and he says himself, 'It is the first time that ever I have
learned to scold'; but he is stung, even to boasting of his old heroic
deeds, when Aufidius taunts him with his un-martial, un-_divine_
infirmity, and brings home to him in very words, at last, the Poet's
suppressed verdict, the Poet's deferred sentence, GUILTY!--of what? He
is but A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertook _the state_! He is but
A SLAVE, and he was caught climbing to the imperial chair, and putting
on the purple. He is but 'a _dog_ to the commonalty,' and he was
sitting in the place of God.
Aufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these particular
and private affections. When Coriolanus turns to him after that appeal
from Volumnia has had its effect, and asks:--
'Now, good Aufidius,
Were _you in my stead_, say, would _you_ have heard
A mother _less_, or granted _less_, Aufidius?'
He answers, guardedly, 'I was moved _withal_.' But the philosopher has
his word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in under the Poet's,
covertly, 'I was _moved_ with-_all_.' [It is the Play of the
Common-weal.] And what should the single private man, the man of
exclusive affections and changeful humours, do with the weal of the
whole? In his noblest conditions, what business has he in the state?
and who shall vote to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of
Volscian armies, that he may say of Rome, _all's mine_, and give it to
his wife or mother? Who shall follow in _his_ train, to plough Rome
and harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at his mother's
feet, and turns back at her word?
_Aufidius_. You lords and HEADS of the STATE, perfidiously
Has he betrayed _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 of the war_, but _at his nurse's tears_
He whined and roar'd away your victory,
That pages blushed at him, and men of heart
_Looked wondering at each other_.
[There is a look which has come down to us. That is
Elizabethan. That is the suppressed Elizabethan.]
_Cor_. Hear'st thou, _Mars_?
_Auf_. Name not _the god_ thou _Boy_ of tears.
_Cor_. _Ha_!
_Auf_. No MORE. [You are no more.]
_Cor_. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart
Too great for what contains it. _Boy? O Slave_!
.... Boy? False _hound_!
[These are the names that are flying about here, now that the martial
chiefs are criticising each other: it is no matter which side they
go.]
'_Boy? O slave_!
... Boy? False hound! ['He is a very dog to the commonalty.']
Alone I did it. BOY?
But it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the principle of
this boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the undivine passion she
wishes to unseat. It is thus that she upbraids the hero with his
un_manly_, ungracious, ignoble purpose:--
'Speak to me, son.
Thou hast affected the fine strains of HONOUR,
To imitate the graces of the gods;
To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?
Think'st thou it honourable for a NOBLE MAN
Still to remember wrongs?
For that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the other
was, in scientific language, its 'anticipation.' He wants nothing of a
god but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in (slight deficiences in
a god already). 'Yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in
character.'
NOBILITY, HONOUR, MANLINESS, HEROISM, GOOD CITIZENSHIP, FREEDOM,
DIVINITY, PATRIOTISM. We are getting a number of definitions here,
vague popular terms, scientifically fixed, scientifically cleared,
destined to waver, and be confused and mixed with other and fatally
different things in the popular apprehension no more--when once this
science is unfolded for that whole people for whom it was
delivered--no more for ever.
There is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the true ideal
nobility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity. This is the false
affirmation which is put upon the stage here, to be tried, and
examined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's purpose to show--and
very much to his purpose to show, sometimes--what is not the true
affirmation. His method is critical, but his rejection contains the
true definition. The whole play is contrived to shape it here; all
hands combine to frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to pronounce
it; the world is against this 'one man' and his part-liness, though he
be indeed 'every man.' He himself has been compelled to pronounce it;
for the speaker for the whole is the speaker in each of us, and
pronounces his sentences on ourselves with our own lips. 'Being gentle
wounded craves a noble cunning,' is the word of the noble, who comes
back with a Volscian army to exhibit upon the stage this grand
hieroglyphic, this grand dramatic negative of that nobility.
But it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this deadly
antagonism with the manliness she has trained, compelled now to echo
that popular rejection, that the Poet can venture to speak out, at
last, from the depths of his true heroism. It is this Volumnia who
strikes now to the heart of the play with her satire on this
affectation of the graces of the gods,--this assumption of nobility,
and manliness, and the fine strains of _honour_,--in one who is led
only by the blind demon gods, 'that keep this dreadful pother o'er our
heads,'--in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of
his own poor petty private passions, shut up to a poverty of soul
which forbids those assumptions, limited to a nature in which those
_strictly_ human terms can be only affectations, one who concentrates
all his glorious _special_ human gifts on the pursuit of ends for
which the lower natures are also furnished. Honour, forsooth! the fine
strains of honour, and the graces of the gods. Look at that Volscian
army there.
'To tear with thunder _the wide cheeks o' the air,
And yet_ to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
That should but rive an oak.
_Why dost not speak_?'
He can not. There is no speech for that. It does not bear _review_.
'Why dost not speak?
Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
_Still_ to remember wrongs?'
'Let it be _virtuous_ to be _obstinate_,' let there be no better
principle of that identity which we insist on in men, that firmness
which we call manliness, and the cherished _wrong_ is honour.
It is but an interrogative point, but the height of our affirmation is
taken with it. It is a figure of speech and _intensifies_ the
affirmative with its irony.
'This a consul? No.'
'No more, but e'en a woman, and COMMANDED
By such _poor_ passion as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares.' [QUEEN.]
'Give me that _man_ that is not _passion's slave_.
Since my dear soul _was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election_,
She hath seal'd thee for herself: _for_ thou hast been
As one, in suffering _all_, that _suffers_ nothing.
But the man who rates so highly 'this single mould of Marcius,' and
the wounded name of it, that he will _forge_ another for it 'i' the
fire of burning Rome,' who will hurt the world to ease the rankling of
his single wrong, who will plough Rome and harrow Italy to cool the
fever of his thirst for vengeance; this is not the man, this is not
the hero, this is not THE GOD, that the scientific review accepts.
Whoso has put him in the chair of state on earth, or in heaven, must
'revoke that ignorant election.' Whatever our 'perfect example in
civil life' may be, and we are, perhaps, not likely to get it openly
in the form of an historic '_composition_' on this author's stage,
whatever name and shape it may take when it comes, this evidently is
not it. This Caius Marcius is dismissed for the present from this
Poet's boards. This curule chair that stands here empty yet, for aught
that we can see, and this crown of 'olives of endless age,' is not for
him.
'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
Against him first.
'We proceed first by negatives, and conclude after every
species of rejection.'
On the surface of this play, lies everywhere the question of the
Common-Weal, in its relation to the good that is private and
particular, scientifically reviewed, as a question in proportion,--as
the question of the whole against the part,--of the greater against
the less,--nay, as the question of that which is against that which is
not. For it is a treatment which throws in passing, the shadow of the
old metaphysical suspicion and scepticism on that chaotic
unaxiomatical condition of things which the scientific eye discovers
here, for the new philosophy with all its new comprehension of the
actual, with all its new convergency on practice, is careful to inform
us that it observes, notwithstanding the old distinction between
'being and becoming.' This is an IDEAL philosophy also, though the
notions of nature are more respected in it, than the spontaneous
unconsidered notions of men.
It is the largeness of the objective whole, the historic whole and the
faculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense of relation and
obligation to it, as the highest historic law,--the _formal_, the
_essential law_ of _kind_ in him, it is the breadth of reason, it is
the circumference of conscience, it is the _grandeur_ of duty which
this author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and
ignoring of the _whole_, that forgetfulness of the world, and the
universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the
narrowness of passion and private affection create, whether in the
one, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the whole against the
will of the part, no matter where the limit of that partiality, or
'partliness,' as the '_poor_ citizen' calls it, is fixed whether it be
the selfishness of the single self, or whether the household tie
enlarges its range, whether it be the partiality of class or faction,
or the partiality of kindred or race, or the partiality of geographic
limits, the question of the play, the question of the whole, of the
worthier whole, is still pursued with scientific exaction. It is the
conflict with axioms which is represented here, and not with wordy
axioms only, not with abstractions good for the human mind only, in
its abstract self-sustained speculations, but with historical axioms,
axioms which the universal nature knows, laws which have had the
consent of things since this nature began, laws which passed long ago
the universal commons.
It is the false unscientific state which is at war, not with abstract
speculation merely, but with the nature of things and the received
logic of the universe, which this man of a practical science wishes to
call attention to. It is the crowning and enthroning of that which is
private and particular, it is the anointing of passion and instinct,
it is the arming of the absolute--the demon--will; it is the putting
into the hands of the ignorant part the sceptre of the whole, which
strikes the scientific Reviewer as the thing to be noted here. And by
way of proceeding by negatives first, he undertakes to convey to
others the impression which this state of things makes upon his own
mind, as pointedly as may be, consistently with those general
intentions which determine his proceedings and the conditions which
limit them, and he is by no means timid in availing himself of the
capabilities of his story to that end. The true spectacle of the
play,--the principal hieroglyphic of it,--the one in which this
hieroglyphic criticism approaches the metaphysical intention most
nearly, is one that requires interpretation. It does not report itself
to the eye at once. The showman stops to tell us before he produces
it, that it _is_ a symbol,--that this is one of the places where he
'prays in aid of similes,'--that this is a specimen of what he calls
elsewhere 'allusive' writing. The true spectacle of the play,--the
grand hieroglyphic of it,--is that view of the city, and the woman in
the foreground kneeling _for it_, 'to her _son_, her _corrected_ son,'
begging for pardon of her corrected rebel--hanging for life on the
chance of his changeful moods and passions. It is _Rome_ that lies
stretched out there upon her hills, in all her visible greatness and
claims to reverence; it is Rome with her Capitolian crown, forth from
which the Roman matron steps, and with no softer cushion than the
flint, in the dust at the rebel's feet, kneels '_to show_'--as she
tells us--to show as clearly as the conditions of the exhibition allow
it to be exhibited, DUTY as mistaken,--'_as_ mistaken,'--_all the
while_ between _the child_ and _parent_.
It is Jupiter that stoops; it is Olympus doing obeisance to the
mole-hill; it is the divineness of the universal law--the _formal_ law
in man--that is prostrate and suppliant in her person; and the Poet
exhausts even his own powers of expression, and grows inarticulate at
last, in seeking to convey his sense of this ineffable, impossible,
historical pretension. It is as 'if Olympus to a mole-hill should _in
supplication nod_; it is as if _the pebbles_ on the hungry beach
should _fillip the stars_; as if _the mutinous winds_ should strike
the proud cedars against the fiery sun, _murdering impossibility_, to
make what _can not be_, slight work,'--what can not _be_.
That was the spectacle of the play, and that was the world's spectacle
when the play was written. Nay, worse; a thousandfold more wild and
pitiful, and confounding to the intellect, and revolting to its
sensibilities, was the spectacle that the State offered then to the
philosophic eye. The Poet has all understated his great case. He has
taken the pattern-man in the private affections, the noble man of mere
instinct and passion, and put _him_ in the chair of state;--the man
whom nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with kingly
graces.
'As waves before a vessel under sail
So men obeyed him, and fell below his stern,'
'If he would but incline to the people, there never was a
worthier man.'
Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the
nobility of human sense,--not to the loyalty of the husband,--not to
the filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and
personal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the
patrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe
her _weal_--such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and
ruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his
brow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and
action,--and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg
her welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife,
with her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could
say then, 'The laws of England are at my commandment.'
Crimes that the historic pen can only point to,--not record,--low,
illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton
extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations--_these_
were the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the
sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the
vices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, and _their_
kindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. To _these_,--men who
meddled with affairs of State,--who took, even at such a time, the
State to be _their_ business,--must address themselves; for these were
the councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and
the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His _veto_ could not
get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and
circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the
soul of power be reached and conquered then--the soul of him 'within
whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions,
to whom this _argument_ must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,'
basest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter,
personal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind
a most inherent baseness,' _these_ were the weapons,--the required
weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these 'dogs of the
commonalty' men who were indeed 'noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed 'fold
in the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift,
deliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the
days when _England's_ victories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in
such a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked
wondering at each other.'
And, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose
to herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the
scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself
expected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself
called upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform
it--she must produce first her doctrine of '_true_ forms,' her
scientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of
constructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could
criticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes
necessary in the sciences,' and to which 'those who would let in new
light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the
grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its
finger' that which was unspeakable,--her scorn of it. She could borrow
the freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new
dialect,--not their anticipation of her _veto_ only, but her eternal
affirmation,--the word of her consulship, the rule of her
nobility,--the nobility of being,--being in the human,--the nobility
of manliness,--_the divinity of State_, the _true_ doctrine of
it;--and, to speak _truly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi._'