CORIOLANUS

Shakespeare has in this play shown himself well versed in history and

state affairs. CORIOLANUS is a storehouse of political commonplaces. Any

one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's

Reflections, or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of

Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and

against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the

claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it,

peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and

the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespeare himself seems to have had a

leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling

of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of

baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of

their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it.--The

cause of the people is indeed but little calculated as a subject for

poetry: it admits of rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation,

but it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind, 'no jutting

frieze, buttress, or coigne of vantage' for poetry 'to make its pendant

bed and procreant cradle in'. The language of poetry naturally falls in

with the language of power. The imagination is an exaggerating and

exclusive faculty: it takes from one thing to add to another: it

accumulates circumstances together to give the greatest possible effect

to a favourite object. The understanding is a dividing and measuring

faculty: it judges of things, not according to their immediate

impression on the mind, but according to their relations to one another.

The one is a monopolizing faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of

present excitement by inequality and disproportion; the other is a

distributive faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate

good, by justice and proportion. The one is an aristocratical, the other

a republican faculty. The principle of poetry is a very anti-levelling

principle. It aims at effect, it exists by contrast. It admits of no

medium. It is everything by excess. It rises above the ordinary standard

of sufferings and crimes. It presents a dazzling appearance. It shows

its head turretted, crowned, and crested. Its front is gilt and

blood-stained. Before it 'it carries noise, and behind it tears'. It has

its altars and its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices. Kings,

priests, nobles, are its train-bearers, tyrants and slaves its

executioners.--'Carnage is its daughter.' Poetry is right-royal. It puts

the individual for the species, the one above the infinite many, might

before right. A lion hunting a flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses is

a more poetical object than they; and we even take part with the lordly

beast, because our vanity or some other feeling makes us disposed to

place ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. So we feel some

concern for the poor citizens of Rome when they meet together to compare

their wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and with blows and

big words drives this set of 'poor rats', this rascal scum, to their

homes and beggary before him. There is nothing heroical in a multitude

of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they

are like to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their

cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride

and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted

into contempt for their pusillanimity. The insolence of power is

stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame submission to usurped

authority or even the natural resistance to it has nothing to excite or

flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or

oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We

had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in

ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man:

the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in

pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract

right.--Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the people: yet the

instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he

turns his arms against his country. If his country was not worth

defending, why did he build his pride on its defence? He is a conqueror

and a hero; he conquers other countries, and makes this a plea for

enslaving his own; and when he is prevented from doing so, he leagues

with its enemies to destroy his country. He rates the people 'as if he

were a God to punish, and not a man of their infirmity'. He scoffs at

one of their tribunes for maintaining their rights and franchises: 'Mark

you his absolute SHALL?' not marking his own absolute WILL to take

everything from them, his impatience of the slightest opposition to his

own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If

the great and powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of Gods, then all

this would have been well: if with a greater knowledge of what is good

for the people, they had as great a care for their interest as they have

themselves, if they were seated above the world, sympathizing with the

welfare, but not feeling the passions of men, receiving neither good nor

hurt from them, but bestowing their benefits as free gifts on them, they

might then rule over them like another Providence. But this is not the

case. Coriolanus is unwilling that the senate should show their 'cares'

for the people, lest their 'cares' should be construed into 'fears', to

the subversion of all due authority; and he is no sooner disappointed in

his schemes to deprive the people not only of the cares of the state,

but of all power to redress themselves, than Volumnia is made madly to

exclaim:

Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,

And occupations perish.

This is but natural: it is but natural for a mother to have more

regard for her son than for a whole city; but then the city should

be left to take some care of itself. The care of the state cannot,

we here see, be safely entrusted to maternal affection, or to the

domestic charities of high life. The great have private feelings of

their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must

curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of

the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to

them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of

OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR

wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude. If they had the

superior knowledge ascribed to them (which they have not) it would

only render them so much more formidable; and from Gods would

convert them into Devils. The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is

that those who have little shall have less, and that those who have

much shall take all that others have left. The people are poor;

therefore they ought to be starved. They are slaves; therefore they

ought to be beaten. They work hard; therefore they ought to be

treated like beasts of burden. They are ignorant; therefore they

ought not to be allowed to feel that they want food, or clothing, or

rest, that they are enslaved, oppressed, and miserable. This is the

logic of the imagination and the passions; which seek to aggrandize

what excites admiration and to heap contempt on misery, to raise

power into tyranny, and to make tyranny absolute; to thrust down

that which is low still lower, and to make wretches desperate: to

exalt magistrates into kings, kings into gods; to degrade subjects

to the rank of slaves, and slaves to the condition of brutes. The

history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon

the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in

which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which

the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak,

and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.

We may depend upon it that what men delight to read in books, they

will put in practice in reality.

One of the most natural traits in this play is the difference of the

interest taken in the success of Coriolanus by his wife and mother.

The one is only anxious for his honour; the other is fearful for his

life.

Volumnia. Methinks I hither hear your husband's drum:

I see him pluck Aufidius down by th' hair:

Methinks I see him stamp thus--and call thus--

Come on, ye cowards; ye were got in fear

Though you were born in Rome; his bloody brow

With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes

Like to a harvest man, that's task'd to mow

Or all, or lose his hire.

Virgila. His bloody brow! Oh Jupiter, no blood.

Volumnia. Away, you fool; it more becomes a man

Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba,

When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier

Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood

At Grecian swords contending.

When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her son's return, she says

in the true spirit of a Roman matron:

These are the ushers of Martius: before him

He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.

Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie,

Which being advanc'd, declines, and then men die.

Coriolanus himself is a complete character: his love of reputation,

his contempt of popular opinion, his pride and modesty, are

consequences of each other. His pride consists in the inflexible

sternness of his will; his love of glory is a determined desire to

bear down all opposition, and to extort the admiration both of

friends and foes. His contempt for popular favour, his unwillingness

to hear his own praises, spring from the same source. He cannot

contradict the praises that are bestowed upon him; therefore he is

impatient at hearing them. He would enforce the good opinion of

others by his actions, but does not want their acknowledgements in

words.

Pray now, no more: my mother,

Who has a charter to extol her blood,

When she does praise me, grieves me.

His magnanimity is of the same kind. He admires in an enemy that

courage which he honours in himself: he places himself on the hearth

of Aufidius with the same confidence that he would have met him in

the field, and feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes

from him all temptation for using it against him.

In the title-page of Coriolanus it is said at the bottom of the

Dramatis Personae, 'The whole history exactly followed, and many of

the principal speeches copied, from the life of Coriolanus in

Plutarch.' It will be interesting to our readers to see how far this

is the case. Two of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus

and Aufidius and between Coriolanus and his mother, are thus given

in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, dedicated to Queen

Elizabeth, 1579. The first is as follows:

It was even twilight when he entered the city of Antium, and many

people met him in the streets, but no man knew him. So he went

directly to Tullus Aufidius' house, and when he came thither, he got

him up straight to the chimney-hearth, and sat him down, and spake

not a word to any man, his face all muffled over. They of the house

spying him, wondered what he should be, and yet they durst not bid

him rise. For ill-favouredly muffled and disguised as he was, yet

there appeared a certain majesty in his countenance and in his

silence: whereupon they went to Tullus, who was at supper, to tell

him of the strange disguising of this man. Tullus rose presently

from the board, and coming towards him, asked him what he was, and

wherefore he came. Then Martius unmuffled himself, and after he had

paused awhile, making no answer, he said unto himself, If thou

knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing me, dost not perhaps believe

me to be the man I am indeed, I must of necessity discover myself to

be that I am. 'I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thyself

particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, great hurt and

mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus that I

bear. For I never had other benefit nor recompence of the true and

painful service I have done, and the extreme dangers I have been in,

but this only surname; a good memory and witness of the malice and

displeasure thou shouldest bear me. Indeed the name only remaineth

with me; for the rest, the envy and cruelty of the people of Rome

have taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobility and

magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the

people. This extremity hath now driven me to come as a poor suitor,

to take thy chimney-hearth, not of any hope I have to save my life

thereby. For if I had feared death, I would not have come hither to

put myself in hazard; but pricked forward with desire to be revenged

of them that thus have banished me, which now I do begin, in putting

my person into the hands of their enemies. Wherefore if thou hast

any heart to be wrecked of the injuries thy enemies have done thee,

speed thee now, and let my misery serve thy turn, and so use it as

my service may be a benefit to the Volsces: promising thee, that I

will fight with better good will for all you, than I did when I was

against you. Knowing that they fight more valiantly who know the

force of the enemy, than such as have never proved it. And if it be

so that thou dare not, and that thou art weary to prove fortune any

more, then am I also weary to live any longer. And it were no wisdom

in thee to save the life of him who hath been heretofore thy mortal

enemy, and whose service now can nothing help, nor pleasure thee.'

Tullus hearing what he said, was a marvellous glad man, and taking

him by the hand, he said unto him: 'Stand up, O Martius, and be of

good cheer, for in proffering thyself unto us, thou doest us great

honour: and by this means thou mayest hope also of greater things at

all the Volsces' hands.' So he feasted him for that time, and

entertained him in the honourablest manner he could, talking with

him of no other matter at that present: but within few days after,

they fell to consultation together in what sort they should begin

their wars.

The meeting between Coriolanus and his mother is also nearly the

same as in the play.

Now was Martius set then in the chair of state, with all the honours

of a general, and when he had spied the women coming afar off, he

marvelled what the matter meant: but afterwards knowing his wife

which came foremost, he determined at the first to persist in his

obstinate and inflexible rancour. But overcome in the end with

natural affection, and being altogether altered to see them, his

heart would not serve him to tarry their comming to his chair, but

coming down in haste, he went to meet them, and first he kissed his

mother, and embraced her a pretty while, then his wife and little

children. And nature so wrought with him, that the tears fell from

his eyes, and he could not keep himself from making much of them,

but yielded to the affection of his blood, as if he had been

violently carried with the fury of a most swift-running stream.

After he had thus lovingly received them, and perceiving that his

mother Volumnia would begin to speak to him, he called the chiefest

of the council of the Volsces to hear what she would say. Then she

spake in this sort: 'If we held our peace, my son, and determined

not to speak, the state of our poor bodies, and present sight of our

raiment, would easily betray to thee what life we have led at home,

since thy exile and abode abroad; but think now with thyself, how

much more unfortunate than all the women living, we are come hither,

considering that the sight which should be most pleasant to all

others to behold, spiteful fortune had made most fearful to us:

making myself to see my son, and my daughter here her husband,

besieging the walls of his native country: so as that which is the

only comfort to all others in their adversity and misery, to pray

unto the Gods, and to call to them for aid, is the only thing which

plungeth us into most deep perplexity. For we cannot, alas, together

pray, both for victory to our country, and for safety of thy life

also: but a world of grievous curses, yea more than any mortal enemy

can heap upon us, are forcibly wrapped up in our prayers. For the

bitter sop of most hard choice is offered thy wife and children, to

forgo one of the two; either to lose the person of thyself, or the

nurse of their native country. For myself, my son, I am determined

not to tarry till fortune in my lifetime do make an end of this war.

For if I cannot persuade the rather to do good unto both parties,

than to overthrow and destroy the one, preferring love and nature

before the malice and calamity of wars, thou shalt see, my son, and

trust unto it, thou shalt no sooner march forward to assault thy

country, but thy foot shall tread upon thy mother's womb, that

brought thee first into this world. And I may not defer to see the

day, either that my son be led prisoner in triumph by his natural

countrymen, or that he himself do triumph of them, and of his

natural country. For if it were so, that my request tended to save

thy country, in destroying the Volsces, I must confess, thou

wouldest hardly and doubtfully resolve on that. For as to destroy

thy natural country, it is altogether unmeet and unlawful, so were

it not just and less honourable to betray those that put their trust

in thee. But my only demand consisteth, to make a gaol delivery of

all evils, which delivereth equal benefit and safety, both to the

one and the other, but most honourable for the Volsces. For it shall

appear, that having victory in their hands, they have of special

favour granted us singular graces, peace and amity, albeit

themselves have no less part of both than we. Of which good, if so

it came to pass, thyself is the only author, and so hast thou the

only honour. But if it fail, and fall out contrary, thyself alone

deservedly shalt carry the shameful reproach and burthen of either

party. So, though the end of war be uncertain, yet this

notwithstanding is most certain, that if it be thy chance to

conquer, this benefit shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest, to be

chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy country. And if fortune

overthrow thee, then the world will say, that through desire to,

revenge thy private injuries, thou hast for ever undone thy good

friends, who did most lovingly and courteously receive thee.'

Martius gave good ear unto his mother's words, without interrupting

her speech at all, and after she had said what she would, he held

his peace a pretty while, and answered not a word. Hereupon she

began again to speak unto him, and said; 'My son, why dost thou not

answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether to give place unto thy

choler and desire of revenge, and thinkest thou it not honesty for

thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a cause? Dost thou

take it honourable for a nobleman, to remember the wrongs and

injuries done him, and dost not in like case think it an honest

nobleman's part to be thankful for the goodness that parents do show

to their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought

to bear unto them? No man living is more bound to show himself

thankful in all parts and respects than thyself; who so universally

showest all ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken of

thy country, exacting grievous payments upon them, in revenge of the

injuries offered thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto showed thy

poor mother any courtesy. And therefore it is not only honest, but

due unto me, that without compulsion I should obtain my so just and

reasonable request of thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade

thee to it, to what purpose do I defer my last hope?' And with these

words herself, his wife and children, fell down upon their knees

before him: Martius seeing that, could refrain no longer, but went

straight and lifted her up, crying out, 'Oh mother, what have you

done to me?' And holding her hard by the right hand, 'Oh mother,'

said he, 'you have won a happy victory for your country, but mortal

and unhappy for your son: for I see myself vanquished by you alone.'

These words being spoken openly, he spake a little apart with his

mother and wife, and then let them return again to Rome, for so they

did request him; and so remaining in the camp that night, the next

morning he dis-lodged, and marched homeward unto the Volsces'

country again.

Shakespeare has, in giving a dramatic form to this passage, adhered

very closely and properly to the text. He did not think it necessary

to improve upon the truth of nature. Several of the scenes in JULIUS

CAESAR, particularly Portia's appeal to the confidence of her

husband by showing him the wound she had given herself, and the

appearance of the ghost of Caesar to Brutus, are, in like manner,

taken from the history.