is praising the soldiers who served with him in that journey when he is shouted down and condemned to banishment. At Antium he has not even the chance of speaking. Shakespeare, who often shows how critically the commoner or lesser imperfections of humanity may intervene, makes the catastrophes both at Rome and Antium depend upon his ungovernable tongue, which cannot be stilled. All those who have encouraged his pride endeavour to control its dangerous outbursts. Accident does not intervene against him, as in other tragedies of Shakespeare. His own faults and his enemies' knowledge of them are his bane. To the Volscian lords, he declares mistakenly, "Tis the first time that ever I was forced to scold," though no woman ever louder or more voluble than he on two previous occasions. "Put not your worthy rage into your tongue,' says Menenius in Act III. sc. i. His want of self-knowledge was is extreme. He is a man of action and no Hamlet to look inward, and his only soliloquy evades the question that must have agitated his mind. His pride, in Shakespeare, has become monstrous, though to some extent disguised by an outward modesty, "which doth protest too much," and is apt to fail in moments of excitement, even ludicrously, as in "On fair ground I could beat forty of them" (III. i. 240). If, then, Shakespeare has given much to Coriolanus, he has also emphasised his faults, greatly imperilled our sympathy, and added excuse to the people's action; and in another place, intentionally or not, he has left his conduct open to suspicion. Without adopting the charge inferred, I will put the case for it as strongly as I can. In Plutarch, when Coriolanus is banished, he alone is unabashed and not cast down, and "only of all other gentlemen that were angry at his fortunes did outwardly show no manner of passion nor care at all for himself"; but it is carefully explained that this is not due to any effort of reason or moderation of temper, but because he was so wholly possessed with wrath and desire of revenge "that he had no sense nor feeling of the hard state he was in." He comforts his wife and mother, and persuades them to be content with his chance, leaves the city with three or four friends only, spends a few days in the country at his houses, "turmoiled with sundry sorts and kinds of thoughts," and, in the end, "seeing he could resolve no way to take a profitable or honourable course," resolves to seek the Volsces. As this appears in Shakespeare, it is possible to suspect a dreadful instance of irony, and that the lesson of dissimulation which he, and not Plutarch, has made Volumnia teach Coriolanus, has first reacted upon herself. In the scene which begins Act IV., without Plutarch's explanations, his statement is expanded. Coriolanus is made to appeal to reason, to preach fortitude, and to allude to precepts "that would make invincible The heart that conn'd them." Nay, he is hopeful; he will be loved when he is lacked; he will do well yet; and he promises that his friends shall hear from him still, and never of him aught but what is like him formerly. Yet he, who, saving only Aufidius, hated most a promise-breaker (I. viii. 1, 2), was silent henceforward to mother, wife, and friend, and after the presentation-introduced into the narrative by Shakespeare as if to show the species traitor in its most infamous degree-of a Roman traitor upon a lower plane, we meet him next far on his ignoble course and apparently, without hesitation, determined to forget both friends and promises. He soliloquises upon friendship turned to enmity by trifling causes, and foes endeared by the like, but has not a word of friends who feel his misfortunes as their own and watch for news of him. Had he then, already, when he bade farewell, to adopt his own words, surceased his truth, and taught his mind a most inherent baseness? If his pride and consciousness of injury, unqualified by any perception of fault in himself, could make him a traitor, the very thing that he had been charged with and resented most, could it also first deprive him of his vaunted truth? Mr. E. K. Chambers, annotating Coriolanus's exclamation "O the gods" in IV. i. 37, when his mother has urged him to "determine on some course,' writes, "Coriolanus suddenly realises how the revenge, which is already beginning to shape itself in his mind, must inevitably bring him into conflict with all that he holds most dear"; and it is possible to read some hint of a change in his character into what we have later from Aufidius in V. vi. 21 et seq. But even if a reader were confident of his dissimulation on such grounds, that confidence would be severely shaken on reading Mr. A. C. Bradley's view of the probable development of Coriolanus's purpose.1 Mr. Bradley says: "As I have remarked, Shakespeare does not exhibit to us 1 The British Academy. Second Annual Shakespeare Lecture, July 1, 1912. Coriolanus. Oxford University Press. the change of mind which issues in this frightful purpose; but from what we hear and see later we can tell how he imagined it; and the key lies in that idea of burning Rome. As time passes, and no suggestion of recall reaches Coriolanus, and he learns what it is to be a solitary homeless exile, his heart hardens, his pride swells to a mountainous bulk, and the wound in it becomes a fire. The fellowpatricians from whom he parted lovingly now appear to him ingrates and dastards, scarcely better than the loathsome mob. Somehow, he knows not how, even his mother and wife have deserted him. He has become nothing to Rome, and Rome shall hear nothing from him. Here in solitude he can find no relief in a storm of words; but gradually the blind intolerable chaos of resentment conceives and gives birth to a vision, not merely of battle and indiscriminate slaughter, but of the whole city one tower of flame. To see that with his bodily eye would satisfy his soul; and the way to the sight is through the Volscians. . . . This is Shakespeare's idea, not Plutarch's. In Plutarch there is not a syllable about the burning of Rome." In this masterly and convincing analysis there is but one point that seems questionable, and it does not radically affect the main conclusions although it is described as the key to Coriolanus's purpose. The idea that Rome will be burnt appears to me to arise as the probable result of a sack and not as an obsession of Coriolanus himself. If it is not directly mentioned in Plutarch, at any rate we are told of burning as a usual occurrence: "he [Coriolanus] was very careful to keep the noblemen's lands and goods safe from harm and burning, but spoiled all the whole country besides"; and it is probable that the cities which made resistance and were sacked were also burnt. Again: "The people. . . accused the nobility, how they had procured Martius to make these wars to be revenged of them: because it pleased them to see their goods burnt and spoiled before their eyes," etc. In the play the first messenger says only that Marcius “vows revenge as spacious as between The young'st and oldest thing." The second reports what we have already seen in Plutarch, destruction by fire, and then Cominius enters and predicts the events of a sack, in which burning has its place. Later references, such as that of Menenius, "If he were putting to my house the brand That should consume it," assume it as what is naturally to be expected. On the other hand, Aufidius (Act IV. sc. vii.) appears to expect the submission of Rome to Coriolanus and says nothing about burning. Coriolanus, indeed, threatens it, but as no one expects less it is difficult to stress the point as remarkable. Indeed it is perhaps rash to stress anything incidental in a story where so much is unaccounted for. Why, in Plutarch, do the Romans breathe fire and sword and then make no defence but humble entreaty? In Shakespeare they are taken unawares and thus rather more excusable as to defence, but we are left to wonder why offered terms are not better than destruction? Aufidius (IV. vii.) expects their submission, and the opinion of Coriolanus that they could not now accept the conditions re-offered with slight modification to Menenius, because they refused them at first, has no force. The first Volscian lord, in Act v. sc. V., says: "making a treaty where There was a yielding." There is nothing, at any rate, to show that Coriolanus would not have been satisfied with humiliation to the extent of accepting his dictated terms, which is the point at issue. 1 Mr. MacCallum 1 argues against the charge of dissimulation in Coriolanus in well-weighed words, and lays great stress on the genuine sound of what he says at the parting. This, at first sight, is conclusive; but are the words of Coriolanus quite like him? Do we not first read them with something of a pleased surprise? To all appearance hot resentment is gone and nobility of nature has triumphed. Shakespeare invents a conversation between a Volscian and a Roman traitor, but gives us no help to reconcile the Coriolanus of parting with the Coriolanus who seeks Aufidius at Antium. It is usual with him to leave something uncertain in the interpretation of his great characters, just as there are always unknown elements of character in real life, and nothing, perhaps, except his genius, more distinguishes him from other writers than this; but in the present case, the difficulty is more obvious than usual. He was content, perhaps, to let us bridge the gap in purpose for ourselves, as Mr. Bradley has done to admiration. It makes something, however, for the idea of dissimulation that the play is full of irony. Coriolanus wishes for reason to seek Aufidius at Antium, and a monstrous cause begins immediately to take birth. He flames with anger at being called a traitor, and becomes one. He abhorred 1 Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background, M. W. MacCallum, 1910, p. 611 et seq. b dissimulation and perhaps stooped to it. His mother preached it and he perhaps practised it first successfully on her. The secret of Coriolanus's change Mr. MacCallum finds in the fact that the people, meanly egged on by the tribunes, followed him with insult as he went to banishment, believing that he refers to this in his words to Aufidius in IV. v., and that the nobles were involved in his hatred by their failure to save him from this insult. But the words to Aufidius: out. only that name [Coriolanus] remains ; The cruelty and envy of the people, Permitted by our dastard nobles, who Have all forsook me, hath devour'd the rest; could refer as well to the cries for his banishment, and at any rate those nobles who were with him when he left Rome would resent the outcry and try to protect him. Moreover, if one passage is cited, other like passages must not be left In the scene of farewell Coriolanus says, "the beast With many heads butts me away." If the people, as Mr. MacCallum supposes, have not yet appeared to carry out the tribunes' orders, then this must refer to the banishment generally; and so it is with, "We . . . cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters, Who did hoot him out o' the city" (IV. vi. 122-124). They correspond with, "Unshout the noise that banished Marcius," or would do if Shakespeare really took such precise trouble to be consistent. Again, Mr. MacCallum appeals to the scene which follows the farewell, i.e. Scene ii. of Act IV., for proof that the people have really driven Coriolanus out with insult. It might as well be taken to mean the contrary. Sicinius says, "Bid them all home: he's gone, and we 'll no further;" and again : "Bid them home: say their great enemy is gone," etc. They would know that as well as the tribunes if present, and the tribunes would hardly lead the insulting crowd. If more is needed than the main process of thought indicated by Mr. Bradley, it may perhaps be found in the burning desire of Coriolanus to be quit of his banishers, to satisfy his wounded pride and make good his threat "I banish you.' This alone could give him back his lost sense of supremacy. He must be utterly severed from them, of another country, so that he may take vengeance upon them and win a name on them as on Corioles. |