VI. CLEOPATRA…

VI. CLEOPATRA

To Cleopatra, the lodestar, the temptress, the predestined mate of Antony, we now turn: and perhaps even Shakespeare has no more marvellous creation than she, or one in which the nature that inspires and the genius that reveals, are so fused in the ideal truth. Campbell says: “He paints her as if the gipsy herself had cast her spell over him, and given her own witchcraft to his pencil.” The witchcraft everybody feels. It is almost impossible to look at her steadily, or keep one’s head to estimate her aright. She is the incarnate poetry of life without duty, glorified by beauty and grace; of impulse without principle, ennobled by culture and intellect. But however it may be with the reader, Shakespeare does not lose his head. He is not the adept mesmerised, the sorcerer ensorcelled. Such avatars as the Egyptian Queen have often been described by other poets, but generally from the point of view either of the servile devotee or of the unsympathetic censor. Here the artist is a man, experienced and critical, yet with the fires of his imagination still ready to leap and glow. He stands in right relation to the laws of life; and his delineation is all the more impressive and all the more aesthetic, the more remorselessly he sacrifices the one-sided claims of the conception in which he delights to the laws of tragic necessity.

Cleopatra is introduced to us as a beauty of a somewhat dusky African type in the full maturity, or perhaps a little past the maturity, of her bloom. The first trait is for certain historically wrong.[214] The line of the Ptolemies was of the purest Grecian breed, with a purity of which they were proud, and which they sought to preserve by close intermarriage within their house. But Shakespeare has so impressed his own idea of Cleopatra on the world that later painters and poets have followed suit ever since. Tennyson, in the Dream of Fair Women tells how she summons him:

I, turning, saw throned on a flowery rise One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d, A Queen with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold.

[214] Wrong; even if on numismatic evidence her features be considered to fall short of and deviate from the Greek ideal. Professor Ferrero describes her face as “bouffie.”

Hawthorne in his Transformation, describing Story’s statue of Cleopatra, which here he attributes to Kenyon, goes further:

The face was a marvellous success. The sculptor had not shunned to give the full Nubian lips and the other characteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy. His courage and integrity had been abundantly rewarded: for Cleopatra’s beauty shone out richer, warmer, more triumphantly beyond comparison, than if, shrinking timidly from the truth, he had chosen the tame Grecian type.

Hawthorne goes astray through taking Shakespeare’s picture, or rather another picture which Shakespeare’s suggested to his own fancy, as a literal portrait; but his very mistake shows how incongruous a fair Cleopatra would now seem to us.

Not often or obtrusively, but of set purpose and beyond the possibility of neglect, does Shakespeare refer to her racial peculiarities. Philo talks of her “tawny front” (I. i. 6), and both he and Antony call her a gipsy with reference not merely to the wily and vagabond character with which these landlopers in Shakespeare’s day were stigmatised, but surely to the darkness of her complexion as well. But the most explicit and the most significant statement is her own:

Think on me, That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black. (I. v. 27.)

This is one of her ironical exaggerations; but does it not suggest something torrid and tropical, something of the fervours of the East and South, that burn in the volcanic fires of Othello and the impulsive splendours of Morocco? Does it not recall the glowing plea of the latter,

Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun, To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. (M. of V., II. i. 1.)

The sun has indeed shone on her and into her. She has known the love and adoration of the greatest.

Broad-fronted Caesar, When thou wast here above the ground, I was A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow; There would he anchor his aspect and die With looking on his life. (I. v. 29.)

Shakespeare magnifies the glories of her conquests, for it was not Pompey the Great but his son who had been her lover of old. But these experiences were only the preparation for the grand passion of her life. She has outgrown them; and if the first freshness is gone, the intoxication of fragrance, the flavour and lusciousness are enhanced. However much she believed herself engrossed by these early fancies, now that she is under the spell of her Antony, her “man of men,” she looks back on them as of her

salad days When (she) was green in judgement, cold in blood. (I. v. 73.)

Talking of her preparations to meet Antony, Plutarch says:

Gessing by the former accesse and credit she had with Julius Caesar and Cneus Pompey (the sonne of Pompey the Great) only for her beawtie; she began to have good hope that she might more easily win Antonius. For Caesar and Pompey knew her when she was but a young thing, and knew not then what the world ment: but now she went to Antonius, at the age when a womans beawtie is at the prime, and she also of best judgement.

“At the prime” are Plutarch’s words; for in point of fact she was then twenty-eight years of age. In this Shakespeare follows and goes beyond his authority; he gives us the impression of her being somewhat older. Pompey talks of her contemptuously as “Egypt’s widow,” and prays:

All the charms of love, Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip. (II. i. 20.)

She herself in ironical self-disparagement avows that she is “wrinkled deep in time” (I. v. 29) and exclaims:

Though age from folly could not give me freedom, It does from childishness. (I. iii. 57.)

But what then? Like Helen and Gudrun and the ladies of romance, or like Ninon de Lenclos in actual life, she never grows old. As even the cynical Enobarbus proclaims, “age cannot wither her.” She has only gained skill and experience in the use and embellishment of her physical charms, and with these the added charms of grace, culture, expressiveness. She knows how to set off her attractions with all the aids of art, wealth and effect, as we see from the mise-en-scène at the Cydnus: and her mobility and address, her wit, her surprises, her range of interest do the rest. Again Shakespeare has got the clue from Plutarch:

Now her beawtie (as it is reported) was not so passing, as unmatchable of other women,[215] nor yet suche, as upon present viewe did enamor men with her; but so sweete was her companie and conversacion, that a man could not possiblie but be taken. And besides her beawtie, the good grace she had to talke and discourse, her curteous nature that tempered her words and dedes, was a spurre that pricked to the quick. Furthermore, besides all these, her voyce and words were marvelous pleasant; for her tongue was an instrument of musicke to divers sports and pastimes, the which she easely turned to any language that pleased her.

In one respect Shakespeare differs from Plutarch; he bestows on her surpassing and unmatchable beauty, so that she transcends the artist’s ideal as much as that transcends mortal womanhood; she o’er-pictures

that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature.[216] (II. ii. 205.)

[215] The sense is: “Her beauty was not so surpassing as to be beyond comparison with other women’s,” etc. Compare the Greek: “καὶ γὰρ ἦν, ὡς λέγουσιν, αὐτὸ μὲν καθ’ αὑτὸ, τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς οὐ πάνυ δυσπαράβλητον, οὐδ’ οἶον ἐκπλῆξαι τοῦς ἰδόντας.”

[216] Plutarch in the corresponding passage merely says that she was “apparelled and attired like the goddesse Venus commonly drawen in picture.”

But he agrees with Plutarch in making her beauty the least part of her spell. Generally speaking it is taken for granted rather than pointed out; and of its great triumph on the Cydnus we hear only in the enraptured reminiscences of Enobarbus. Thus it is removed from the sphere of sense to the sphere of imagination, and is idealised in the fervour of his delight; but, though this we never forget, it is of her other charms that we think most when she is present on the scene.

She is all life and movement, and never the same, so that we are dazzled and bewildered, and too dizzy to measure her by any fixed standard. Her versatility of intellect, her variety of mood, are inexhaustible; and she can pass from gravity to gaiety, from fondness to banter, with a suddenness that baffles conjecture. We can forecast nothing of her except that any forecast will be vain. At her very first entrance the languishing gives place in a moment to the exasperating vein:

If it be love indeed, tell me how much. (I. i. 14.)

Fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent His powerful mandate to you. (I. i. 20.)

For she turns to account even the gibe and the jeer, stings her lover with her venomous punctures, and pursues a policy of pin-pricks not to repel but to allure. The hint comes from Plutarch.

When Cleopatra found Antonius jeasts and slents to be but grosse and souldier-like, in plaine manner; she gave it him finely and without feare taunted him throughly.

And on the other hand she can faint at will, weep and sob beyond measure.

We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears: they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. (I. ii. 152.)

Here, too, the hint is given by Plutarch, but in a later passage, when she fears Antony may return to Octavia:

When he went from her, she fell a weeping and blubbering, looked rufully of the matter, and still found the meanes that Antonius should often tymes finde her weeping.

In the play, when he announces his departure, she is ready to fall; her lace must be cut; she plays the seduced innocent; but she mingles wormwood with her pathos and overwhelms him with all sorts of opposite reproaches. Since he does not bewail Fulvia, that is proof of infidelity:

O most false love! Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see, In Fulvia’s death, how mine received shall be. (I. iii. 62.)

When his distress is not to be confined, she taxes him with mourning for his wife:

I prithee, turn aside and weep for her; Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears Belong to Egypt. (I. iii. 76.)

When he loses patience, she mocks at him:

Ant. You’ll heat my blood: no more. Cle. You can do better yet; but this is meetly. Ant. Now, by my sword,— Cle. And target. Still he mends; But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian, How this Herculean Roman does become The carriage of his chafe. (I. iii. 80.)

But at the word of his leaving she is at once all wistful tenderness:

Courteous lord, one word. Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it: Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it; That you know well: something it is I would,— O, my oblivion is a very Antony, And I am all forgotten.[217] (I. iii. 86.)

[217] See Appendix E.

But thence again she passes on the instant to grave and quiet dignity:

All the gods go with you! upon your sword Sit laurel victory! and smooth success Be strew’d before your feet! (I. iii. 99.)

It is the unexpectedness of her transitions, the impossibility of foreseeing what she will say or do, the certainty that whatever she says or does will be a surprise, that keeps Antony and everyone else in perpetual agitation.[218] Tranquillity and dullness fly at the sound of her name. Her love relies on provocation in both senses of the word, and to a far greater extent in Shakespeare than in Plutarch. Thus Plutarch tells how Octavius’ expedition in occupying Toryne caused dismay among Antony’s troops: “But Cleopatra making light of it: ‘And what daunger, I pray you,’ said she, ‘if Caesar keepe at Toryne?’” On which North has the long marginal note:

The grace of this tawnt can not properly be expressed in any other tongue, bicause of the equivocation of this word Toryne, which signifieth a citie of Albania, and also, a ladell to scoome the pot with: as if she ment, Caesar sat by the fire side, scomming of the pot.

Shakespeare makes no attempt to find an equivalent for the untranslatable jest, but substitutes one of those bitter mocks before which Antony has so often to wince. When he expresses wonder at his rival’s dispatch, she strikes in:

Celerity is never more admired Than by the negligent. (III. vii. 25.)

[218] The love she inspires and feels is of the kind described by La Rochefoucauld: “L’amour, aussi bien que le feu, ne peut subsister, sans un mouvement continuel; et il cesse de vivre dès qu’il cesse d’espérer ou de craindre.” He has another passage that suggests an explanation of the secret of Cleopatra’s permanent attraction for the volatile Antony: “La constance en amour est une inconstance perpétuelle, qui fait que notre coeur s’attache successivement à toutes les qualités de la personne que nous aimons, donnant tantôt la préférence à l’une, tantôt à l’autre; de sorte que cette constance n’est qu’une inconstance arrêtée et renfermée dans un même sujet.” It is curious how often an English reader of La Rochefoucauld feels impelled to illustrate the Reflections on Love and Women by reference to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, but it is very natural. His friend the Duchess of Longueville and the other great ladies of the Fronde resembled her in their charm, their wit, their impulsiveness; and when they engaged in the game of politics, subordinated it like her to their passions and caprices. So his own experience would familiarise La Rochefoucauld with the type, which he has merely generalised, and labelled as the only authentic one.

And she does this sort of thing on principle. She tells Alexas:

See where he is, who’s with him, what he does: I did not send you: if you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick. (I. iii. 2.)

Is it then all artifice? Are all her eddying whims and contradictions mere stratagems to secure her sway? For a moment Antony seems to think so. “She is cunning past man’s thought,” he says in reference to her swooning: and perhaps it is because of her cunning as well as her sinuous grace that his endearing name for her is his “Serpent of old Nile” (I. v. 25). Enobarbus’ reply is in effect that her displays of emotion are too vehement to be the results of art; they are the quintessence of feeling: “her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love” (I. ii. 151).

And both these views are correct. It is her deliberate programme to keep satiety afar by the swiftness and diversity of the changes she assumes; but it is a programme easy to carry out, for it corresponds to her own nature. She is a creature of moods. Excitement, restlessness, curiosity pulse in her life-blood. In Antony’s absence she is as flighty with herself as ever she was with him. She feeds on memories and thoughts of him, but they plague rather than soothe her. In little more than a breathing-space she turns to music, billiards, and fishing; and abandons them all to revel once in her day-dreams.

When the messenger arrives after Antony’s marriage, she in her ungovernable eagerness interrupts him and will not let him disclose the tidings for which she longs. When she hears what they are, she loses all restraint; she stuns him with threats, curses, blows; she hales him by the hair and draws a knife upon him. Then, sinking down in a faint, she suddenly recovers herself with that irrepressible vitality and inquisitiveness of hers, that are bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh:

Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him Report the feature of Octavia, her years, Her inclination, let him not leave out The colour of her hair. (II. v. 111.)

And while we are still smiling at the last little touch, comes that moving outburst of a sensitive and sorely stricken soul:

Pity me, Charmian, But do not speak to me. (iI. v. 118.)

Not long, however, is she in despair. Her knowledge of Antony’s character, her knowledge of her own charms, even her vanity and self-illusion combine to give her assurance of final triumph; and when we next meet her, she is once more hopeful and alert. “Why, methinks,” she sums up at the close of her not very scientific investigation, “this creature’s no such thing” (III. iii. 43); and she concludes, “All may be well enough” (III. iii. 50).

The charm and piquancy of this nimble changefulness are obvious, and it is not without its value as a weapon in the warfare of life. But it is equally true that such shifting gusts will produce unreliability, and even shiftiness. It is quite natural that Cleopatra, a queen and the daughter of kings, should, in her presumptuous mood, insist on being present in the campaign and on leading to battle her own sixty ships. It is no less natural that amid the actual horrors of the conflict, the luxuriously bred lady should be seized with panic and take to flight. Indeed it is precisely what we might expect. For despite the royalty of soul she often displays, there is in Cleopatra a strain of physical timidity, for which Shakespeare has already prepared us. When the messenger of woe is to give his tidings to Antony, he hesitates and says:

The nature of bad news infects the teller,

and Antony answers nobly and truly:

When it concerns the fool or coward. (I. ii. 99.)

We cannot help remembering Antony’s words when Cleopatra visits on the bearer the fault of the bad news to her:

Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me Thou wouldst appear most ugly. (II. v. 96.)

Such a reception according to Antony stamps the fool or the coward. Cleopatra is no fool, but there is a touch of cowardice in her, that appears over and over again.

Thus it is perhaps fear, fear blended with worldliness, that gains a hearing for Thyreus. There is absolutely no indication that she is playing a part and temporising, out of faithfulness to Antony. She had already sent her own private petition to Caesar, confessing his greatness, submitting to his might, and requesting “the circle of the Ptolemies” for her heirs. This, otherwise than in Plutarch, she had done without Antony’s knowledge, who tells her, as though for her information, that he had sent his schoolmaster to bear his terms; with which Cleopatra’s were not associated. Her whole behaviour shows that she dreads Octavius’ power, and dreads the loss of her own wealth and dignities. But, in the scene with Thyreus, is she really prepared to desert and betray her lover? Antony suspects that she is, and appearances are indeed against her. Enobarbus believes that she is, and Enobarbus generally hits on the truth. Yet we have always to remember the temptation she would feel to try her spells on Thyreus and his master: and even after Enobarbus’ desertion she remains with Antony, clings to him, encourages him, arms him, is proud of him. In any case it would not be cold-blooded perfidy, but one of those flaws of weakness, of fear, of self-pity, of self-interest, that take her unawares.[219] For the final treason of the fleet at any rate, of which Antony imagines her guilty, she seems in no way responsible. Plutarch mentions Antony’s infuriated suspicion but adds no word in confirmation, and Shakespeare, who would surely not have left us without direction on so important a matter, is equally reticent. Such hints as he gives, point the other way. We may indeed discount the disclaimers of Mardian and Diomedes who would probably say anything they were told to say. But when Antony greets Cleopatra, “Ah, thou spell! avaunt!” her exclamation,

Why is my lord enraged against his love? (IV. xii. 31.)

[219] “L’on fait plus souvent des trahisons par foiblesse que par un dessein formé de trahir.”—La Rochefoucauld.

seems to express genuine amazement rather than assumed innocence. And in her conversation with her attendants her words, to all appearance, imply that she cannot understand his rage: to her it is merely inexplicable frenzy:

Help me, my women! O, he is more mad Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly Was never so emboss’d. (IV. xiii. 1.)

Moreover, if she had packed cards with Caesar, it is difficult to see why she should not claim a price for her treachery, instead of locking herself up in the Monument as she does, and trying to keep the Romans out. All the negociations and interviews after Antony’s death seem to imply that she had no previous understanding with Octavius.

But she recoils from her lover’s desperation, as she always does when he is deeply moved. She has ever the tact to feel the point at which her blandishments and vexations are out of place and will no longer serve her turn. Just as after the disaster of Actium she only sobs:

O my lord, my lord, Forgive my fearful sails! (III. xi. 54.)

and then can urge no plea but “pardon”; just as after her interview with Thyreus, with no hint of levity, she solemnly imprecates curses on herself and her offspring if she were false; so now she bows before his wrath and flees to the monument. Then follows the fiction of her death, a fiction in which the actress does not forget the finesses of her art.

Say, that the last I spoke was “Antony,” And word it, prithee, piteously. (IV. xiii. 8.)

It is not the most candid nor dignified expedient, but probably it is the most effective one; for violent ills need violent cures; and perhaps there was nothing that could allay Antony’s storm of distrust but as fierce a storm of regret. At any rate it has the result at which Cleopatra aims; but she knows him well, and presently foresees that the antidote may have a further working than she intends. Diomedes seems to state the mere truth when he says that her prophesying fear dispatched him to proclaim the truth.

But it is too late; and there only remains the lofty parting scene, when if she still fears to open the gates lest Caesar should enter, she draws her lover up to the monument, and lightens his last moments no less with her queenliness than with her love. She feels the fitness and the pathos in his ending, that none but Antony should conquer Antony: she not obscurely hints that she will take the same path. When he bids her:

Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety; (IV. xv. 47.)

she answers well, “They do not go together.” Her passionate ejaculation ere she faints above his corpse, her appeal to her frightened women,

what’s brave, what’s noble, Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, (V. xv. 87.)

have a whole-heartedness and intensity that first reveal the greatness of her nature.

And yet even now she seems to veer from the prouder course on which she has set out. We soon find her in appearance paltering with her Roman decision. She sends submissive messages to Caesar; she delays her death so long that Proculeius can surprise her in her asylum; she accepts her conqueror’s condescension; she stoops to hold back and conceal the greater part of her jewels.

It is a strange riddle that Shakespeare has here offered to the student, and perhaps no certain solution of it is to be found. In this play, even more than in most, he resorts to what has been called his shorthand, to the briefest and most hurried notation of his meaning, and often it is next to impossible to explain or extend his symbols.

The usual interpretation, which has much to commend it, accepts all these apparent compliances of Cleopatra for what on the face they are. They are taken as instances of Shakespeare’s veracious art that abstains from sophisticating fact for the sake of effect, and attains a higher effect through this very conscientiousness and self-restraint. Just as he makes the enthusiastic fidelity of Enobarbus fail to stand the supreme test, so he detects a flaw in the resolute yearning of Cleopatra. The body of her dead past weighs her down, and she cannot advance steadily in the higher altitudes. She wavers in her determination to die, as is implied by her retention of her treasure, and “the courtesan’s instincts of venality and falsehood”[220] still assert their sway. She has too easily taken to heart Antony’s advice, and is but too ready, despite all her brave words, to grasp at her safety along with her honour, or what she is pleased to consider her honour to be. And, just as in the case of Enobarbus, an external stimulus is needed to urge her to the nobler course. The gods in their unkindness are kind to her. Dolabella’s disclosures and her own observations convince her that Caesar spares her only for his own glory and for her shame; that, as she foreboded, her safety and her honour do not go together. Then, at the thought of the indignity, all her royal and aristocratic nature rises in revolt, and she at last chooses as she ought.

[220] Boas, Shakespeare and his Predecessors.

On the other hand it is possible to maintain that all these apparent lapses are mere subterfuges forced on Cleopatra to ensure the success of her scheme; and this interpretation receives some support not only from the text of the play, but from the comparison of it with North, and a consideration of what in the original narrative Shakespeare takes for granted, of what he alters, and of what he adds.[221]

After her more or less explicit statements in Antony’s death scene, her suppliant message from the monument is an interpolation of the dramatist’s; but so is the very different declaration which she subsequently makes to her confidantes and in which her purpose of suicide seems unchanged:

My desolation does begin to make A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar; Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave, A minister of her will: and it is great To do the thing that ends all other deeds; Which shackles accidents and bolts up change; Which sleeps, and never palates more the dung,[222] The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s. (V. ii. 1.)

[221] This was first suggested in A. Stahr’s Cleopatra. I prefer to give the arguments in my own way.

[222] So in folio: some modern editions alter unnecessarily to “dug.”

Which of these two utterances gives the true Cleopatra, the one transmitted at second hand for Octavius’ consumption, or the one breaking from her in private to her two women who will be true to her till death? Quite apart from the circumstances in which, and the persons to whom, they are spoken, there is a marked difference in tone between the ceremonious official character of the first, and the spontaneous sincerity of the second.

Then just at this moment Proculeius arrives and engages her in talk. It is not wonderful that she should look for a moment to the man Antony had recommended to her; but, though she is deferential to Octavius, her one request is not for herself but for her son. And when the surprise is effected, there is no question of the genuineness of her attempt at self-destruction. Even when she is disarmed, she persists, as with Plutarch, in her resolution to kill herself if need be by starvation. In Plutarch she is dissuaded from this by threats against her children; in Shakespeare events proceed more rapidly, and she has no time to put such a plan in practice; nor is any serious use made of the maternal “motif.” From first to last it is, along with grief for Antony, resentment at the Roman triumph that moves her. And these feelings are in full activity when immediately afterwards she is left in charge of Dolabella. This passage also is an addition, and it is noteworthy that it begins with her deification of Antony, and ends with Dolabella’s assurance, which in Plutarch only follows later where the play repeats it, of her future fate.

Cle. He’ll lead me, then, in triumph? Dol. Madam, he will; I know’t. (V. ii. 109.)

It is just then that Caesar is announced; and it is hard to believe that Cleopatra, with her two master passions excited to the height, should really contemplate embezzling treasure as provision for a life which surely, in view of the facts, she could not care to prolong. Moreover, in Plutarch’s narrative there is a contradiction or ambiguity which North’s marginal note brings into relief, and which would be quite enough to set a duller man than Shakespeare thinking about what it all meant.

At length, she gave him a breefe and memoriall of all the readie money and treasure she had. But by chaunce there stoode Seleucus by, one of her Treasorers, who to seeme a good servant, came straight to Caesar to disprove Cleopatra, that she had not set in al, but kept many things back of purpose. Cleopatra was in such a rage with him, that she flew upon him and tooke him by the heare of the head, and boxed him wellfavoredly. Caesar fell a-laughing, and parted the fray. “Alas,” said she, “O Caesar: is not this a great shame and reproche, that thou having vouchsaved to take the peines to come unto me, and hast done me this honor, poore wretche, and caitife creature, brought into this pitiefull and miserable estate: and that mine owne servaunts should come now to accuse me, though it may be I have reserved some juells and trifles meete for women, but not for me (poore soule) to set out my selfe withall, but meaning to geve some pretie presents and gifts unto Octavia and Livia, that they making meanes and intercession for me to thee, thou mightest yet extend thy favor and mercie upon me?” Caesar was glad to heare her say so, perswading him selfe thereby that she had yet a desire to save her life. So he made her answere, that he did not only geve her that to dispose of at her pleasure, which she had kept backe, but further promised to use her more honorably and bountifully then she would thinke for: and so he tooke his leave of her, supposing he had deceived her, but in deede he was deceived him selfe.

And North underlines the suggestive clauses with his comment:

Cleopatra finely deceiveth Octavius Caesar, as though she desired to live.

It is not hard therefore to see how the whole episode may be taken as contrived on her part. It would be a device of the serpent of old Nile, one of her triumphs of play-acting, by means of which she gets the better of her conqueror and makes him indeed an ass unpolicied. And though the suggestion would come from Plutarch, whom Shakespeare follows in the main very closely throughout this passage, it is pointed out that some of Shakespeare’s modifications in detail seem to favour this view.

And to begin with it should be noticed that in all this episode he passes over what is abject or hysterical or both in Plutarch’s Cleopatra, and gives her a large measure of royal self-respect and self-command. This is how Octavius finds her in the original story:

Cleopatra being layed upon a little low bed in poore estate, when she sawe Caesar come in to her chamber, she sodainly rose up, naked in her smocke, and fell downe at his feete marvelously disfigured: both for that she had plucked her heare from her head, as also for that she had martired all her face with her nailes, and besides, her voyce was small and trembling, her eyes sonke into her heade with continuall blubbering.

Thus, and with other traits that we omit, Plutarch describes her “ougly and pitiefull state,” when Caesar comes to see and comfort her. We cannot imagine Shakespeare’s Cleopatra ever so forgetting what was due to her beauty, her rank, and herself. Then the narrative proceeds:

When Caesar had made her lye downe againe, and sate by her beddes side; Cleopatra began to cleere and excuse her selfe for that she had done, laying all to the feare she had of Antonius. Caesar, in contrarie maner, reproved[223] her in every poynt.

[223] i.e. confuted.

In the play this suggestion is put back to the interview with Thyreus; and is made, not refuted, on the authority of Octavius.

Thy. He knows that you embrace not Antony As you did love, but as you fear’d him. Cle. O! Thy. The scars upon your honour, therefore, he Does pity as constrained blemishes, Not as deserved. Cle. He is a god, and knows What is most right: mine honour was not yielded, But conquer’d merely. (III. xiii. 56.)

But this was before the supreme sorrow had come to quicken in her, her nobler instincts. Now she has no thought of incriminating Antony and exculpating herself. She says with quiet dignity:

Sole sir o’ the world, I cannot project mine own cause so well To make it clear: but do confess I have Been laden with like frailties, which before Have often shamed our sex. (V. ii. 120.)

Even her wrath at Seleucus is less outrageous than in Plutarch. She threatens his eyes, but does not proceed to physical violence. She does not fly upon him and seize him by the hair of the head and box him well-favouredly. These vivacities Shakespeare had remarked, but he transfers them to the much earlier scene when she receives news of Antony’s marriage and strikes the messenger to the ground, and strikes him again, and drags him up and down. Now she has somewhat more self-control, and is no longer carried beyond all limits of decency by her ungovernable moods. Shakespeare, therefore, gives her a new dignity and strength even in this most equivocal scene; and how could these be reconciled with a craven hankering for life and a base desire to retain by swindling a share of its gewgaws?

But a further alteration, we are told, gives a definite though unobtrusive hint that all the while she is in collusion with Seleucus, and that the whole affair is a comedy arranged between them to keep open the door of death. Not only does the treasurer escape unpunished after his disclosure, but he is invited to make it. In Plutarch he merely happens to stand by, and intervenes “to seeme a good servant.” Here Cleopatra calls for him; bids Caesar let him speak on his peril; and herself orders him, “Speak the truth, Seleucus.”

Moreover his statement and her excuse point to a much more serious embezzlement than Plutarch suggests, and just in so far would give Octavius a stronger impression of her desire to live. In the biography Seleucus confines himself to saying that “she had not set in al, but kept many things back of purpose”: and she confesses only to “some juells and trifles meete for women ... meaning to geve some pretie presents and gifts unto Octavia and Livia.” In the play to her question: “What have I kept back?” Seleucus answers:

Enough to purchase what you have made known: (V. ii. 148.)

and she, after the express proviso she makes in advance, that she has not admitted petty things in the schedule, now acknowledges that she has reserved not only “lady trifles, immoment toys“—these were already accounted for—but some “nobler token” for Octavius’ sister and wife.

If these clues are unduly faint, we are reminded that such elliptical treatment is not without parallel in other incidents of the drama. Octavius’ policy in regard to Octavia’s marriage, for example, has, in just the same way, to be gathered from the general drift of events and the general probabilities of the case, from an unimportant suggestion in Plutarch, from the opportunity furnished to Agrippa, and his agency in that transaction, which are not more explicit than the opportunity furnished to Seleucus, and his agency in this.

These arguments are ingenious and not without their cogency, but they leave one unconvinced. The difficulties in accepting them are far greater than in the analogous question of Antony’s marriage. For in the latter the theory of Octavius’ duplicity does not contradict the impression of the scene. Nor does it contradict but only supplements the statement of the historian: the utmost we can say is that it is not made sufficiently prominent. And, lastly, the doubt that is thus left possible does not concern a protagonist of the drama, but at most the chief or one of the chief of the minor characters. But in the present case the impression produced on the unsophisticated reader is certainly that Cleopatra is convicted of fraud: and however that impression may be weakened by a review of the circumstances as a whole, there is no single phrase or detail that brings the opposite theory home to the imagination. Besides, the complicity of Seleucus would be a much bolder fabrication than the complicity of Agrippa: the latter is not recorded, but the opposite of the former is recorded, and was accepted by all who dealt with this episode from Jodelle to Daniel, and probably by all who read Plutarch: the treasurer was present by accident and used the opportunity to ingratiate himself. So Shakespeare, without giving adequate guidance himself, would leave people to the presuppositions they had formed under the guidance of his author. Surely this is a very severe criticism on his art. But this is not all. The misconstruction which he did nothing to prevent and everything to produce, would concern the heroine of the piece, an even more important personage than the hero, as is shown by her receiving the fifth act to herself, while Antony is dismissed in the fourth.

These objections, however, only apply to the view that the suppression and discovery of the treasure were parts of a deliberate stratagem. They do not affect the arguments that Cleopatra has virtually accepted death as the only practical solution, and that the rest of her behaviour at this stage accords ill with mercenary imposture.

In a word both these antagonistic theories approve themselves in so far as they take into account the facts alleged and the impressions produced by the drama. If we credit our feelings, it is quite true that Cleopatra is taken by surprise and put out of countenance, that she seeks to excuse herself and passionately resents the disloyalty of Seleucus. And again, if we credit our feelings, it is quite true that from the time the mortally wounded Antony is brought before her, she has made up her mind to kill herself, and that she is nobler and more queenly for her decision than she was before or than Plutarch makes her.

Of course, buoyant and versatile, feeling her life in every limb, and quick to catch each passing chance, she may even now without really knowing it, without really believing it, have hoped against hope that she might still obtain terms she could accept undisgraced. And the hope of life would bring with it the frailties of life, for clearly it is only the resolve to die that lifts her above herself. So here we should only have another instance of the complexity of her strange nature that can consciously elect the higher path, and yet all the while in its secret councils provide, if it may be, for following the lower.

But is there not another interpretation possible? What are these “lady trifles” and “nobler tokens” that together would purchase all the wealth of money, plate and jewels she has declared. Plutarch, talking of her magnificence when she obeyed Antony’s first summons, evidently does not expect to be believed, and adds that it was such “as is credible enough she might bring from so great a house, and from so wealthie a realme as Ægypt was.” And now she is “again for Cydnus,” and needs her “crown and all.” Already to all intents and purposes she has resolved on her death, as is shown by her frequent assurances. She has also resolved on the means of it; for scarcely has Caesar left, than she tells Charmian:

I have spoke already, and it is provided. (V. ii. 195.)

Will she not also have resolved on the manner of it; and both in the self-consciousness of her beauty and in memory of her first meeting with Antony, does she not desire to depart life for the next meeting with due pomp and state? If we imagine she was keeping back her regalia for this last display, we can understand why Shakespeare inserted the “nobler token” in addition to the unconsidered trifles which she was quite ready to own she had reserved, and of which indeed in Shakespeare though not in Plutarch she had already made express mention as uninventoried.[224] We can understand her consternation and resentment at the disclosure; for just as in regard to the “nobler token” she could not explain her real motives without ruining her plan. And we can admire her “cunning past man’s thought” in turning the whole incident to account as proof that she was willing to live on sufferance as protégée of Caesar.

[224] It is a rather striking coincidence that Jodelle, too, heightens Plutarch’s account of the treasures she has retained, and includes among them the crown jewels and royal robes. Seleucus finishes a panegyric on her wealth:

Croy, Cesar, croy qu’elle a de tout son or Et autres biens tout le meilleur caché.

And she says in her defence:

Hé! si j’avois retenu les joyaux Et quelque part de mes habits royaux, L’aurois-je fait pour moy, las! malheureuse!

No doubt this suggestion is open to the criticism that it is nowhere established by a direct statement; but that also applies to the most probable explanation of some other matters in the play. And meanwhile I think that it, better than the two previous theories we have discussed, satisfies the conditions, by conforming with the data of the play, the treatment of the sources, and the feelings of the reader. On the one hand it fully admits the reality of Cleopatra’s fraud and of her indignation at Seleucus. On the other it removes the discrepancy between her dissimulation, and the loftiness of temper and readiness for death, which she now generally and but for the usual interpretation of this incident invariably displays. It tallies with what we may surmise from Shakespeare’s other omissions and interpolations; and if it goes beyond Plutarch’s account of Caesar’s deception by Cleopatra, it does not contradict it, and therefore would not demand so full and definite a statement as a new story entirely different from the original.

Be that as it may, there is at least no trace of hesitation or compliance in the Queen from the moment when she perceives that Octavius is merely “wording” her. Her self-respect is a stronger or, at any rate, a more conspicuous motive than her love. Antony, when he believed her false had said to her:

Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving, And blemish Caesar’s triumph. Let him take thee, And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians: Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot Of all thy sex; most monster-like be shown For poor’st diminutives, for doits: and let Patient Octavia plough thy visage up With her prepared nails. (IV. xii. 32.)

These words of wrath have lingered in her memory and she echoes them in his dying ears:

Not the imperious show Of the full-fortuned Caesar ever shall Be brooch’d with me; if knife, drugs, serpents have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe: Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour Demuring upon me. (IV. xv. 23.)

The loathsomeness of the prospect grows in her imagination, and compared with it the most loathsome fate is desirable. She tells Proculeius:

Know, sir, that I Will not wait pinion’d at your master’s court; Nor once be chastised with the sober eye Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up And show me to the shouting varletry Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus’ mud Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies Blow me into abhorring! rather make My country’s high pyramides my gibbet, And hang me up in chains. (V. ii. 52.)

And now in the full realisation of the scene, she brings it home to her women:

Cle. Now, Iras, what think’st thou? Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapour. Iras. The gods forbid! Cle. Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras: saucy lictors Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers Ballad us out of tune. (V. ii. 207.)

Such thoughts expel once for all her mutability and flightiness:

My resolution’s placed and I have nothing Of woman in me: now from head to foot I am marble constant; now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine. (V. ii. 238.)

And the scene that follows with the banalities and trivialities of the clown who supplies the aspics among the figs, brings into relief the loneliness of a queenly nature and a great sorrow. Yet not merely the loneliness, but the potency as well. Who would have given the frivolous waiting-women of the earlier scenes credit for devotion and heroism? Yet inspired by her example they learn their lesson and are ready to die as nobly as she. Iras has spoken for them all:

Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the dark. (V. ii. 193.)

Now she brings the robe and crown Cleopatra wore at Cydnus, and then, like Eros, ushers the way. Charmian stays but to close the eyes and arrange the diadem of her dead mistress:

Downy windows, close; And golden Phoebus never be beheld Of eyes again so royal. Your crown’s awry; I’ll mend it, and then play. (V. ii. 319.)

Thereupon she too applies the asp and provokes its fang.

O, come apace, dispatch. (V. ii. 325.)

Even in the last solemn moment there is vanity, artifice, and voluptuousness in Cleopatra. She is careful of her looks, of her state, of her splendour, even in death; and doubtless would have smiled if she could have heard Caesar’s tardy praise:

She looks like sleep, As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace. (V. ii. 349.)

And she does not depart quite in the high Roman fashion. She has studied to make her passage easy, and has taken all measures that may enable her to liken the stroke of death to a lover’s pinch and the biting of the asp to the suckling of a babe, and to say:

As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. (V. ii. 314.)

None the less her exit in its serene grace and dignity is imperial, and deserves the praise of the dying Charmian and the reluctant Octavius.

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VII. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

Hitherto this discussion of Antony and Cleopatra has so far as possible passed over the most distinctive thing in the history of the hero and heroine, the fatal passion that binds them together, gives significance to their lives, and makes their memories famous. Knowing their environment and their nature we are in a better position to see in some measure what it meant.

We have noted how in that generation all ties of customary morality are loosed, how the individual is a law to himself, and how selfishness runs riot in its quest of gratification, acquisition, material ambition. Among the children of that day those make the most sympathetic impression who import into the somewhat casual and indefinite personal relations that remain—the relation of the legionary to his commander, of the freedman to his patron, of the waiting-woman to her mistress—something of universal validity and worth. But obviously no connection in a period like this at once arises so naturally from the conditions, and has the possibilities of such abiding authority, as the love of the sexes. On the one hand it is the most personal bond of all. Love is free and not to be compelled. It results from the spontaneous motion of the individual. Were we to conceive the whole social fabric dissolved, men and women would still be drawn together by mutual inclination in more or less permanent unions of pairs. And yet this attraction that seems to be and that is so completely dictated by choice, that is certainly quite beyond the domain of external compulsion, is in another aspect quite independent of the will of the persons concerned, and sways them like a resistless natural force. It has been said that the highest compliment the lover can pay the beloved is to say, “I cannot help loving you.” Necessity is laid upon him, and he is but its instrument. If then the inclination is so pervasive and imperious that it becomes a master passion, clearly it will supply the grand effective bond when other social bonds fail. When nothing else can, it will enable a man and woman to overleap a few at least of the barriers of their selfishness, and in some measure to merge their egoism in sympathy. This is what justifies Antony’s idolatry of Cleopatra to our feelings. The passion is enthusiastic, and in a way is self-forgetful; and passion, enthusiasm, self-forgetfulness, whatever their aberrations, always command respect. They especially do so in this world of greeds and cravings and calculating self-interest. This infinite devotion that shrinks from no sacrifice, is at once the greatest thing within Antony’s reach, and witness to his own greatness in recognising its worth. The greatest thing within his reach: when we remember what the ambitions of his fellows and his rivals were, there is truth in the words with which he postpones all such ambitions to the bliss of the mutual caress:

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life Is to do thus: when such a mutual pair (embracing) And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless. (I. i. 33.)

And only one of grand general outlook could feel like this, when he had tasted the sweets of conquest and power, and when all the kingdoms of the world were reached to his hand as the alternative for the kingdom of his love. It takes a hero, with such experiences behind him and such opportunities before, to make the disastrous choice. Heine tells us how he read Plutarch at school and how the master “impressed on us that Antony for this woman spoiled his public career, involved himself in domestic unpleasantnesses, and at last plunged himself in ruin. In truth my old master was right, and it is extremely dangerous to establish intimate relations with a person like Cleopatra. It may be the destruction of a hero; but only of a hero. Here as everywhere there is no danger for worthy mediocrity.”

But despite the sympathy with which Shakespeare regards Antony’s passion both as an object of pursuit and as an indication of nobility, he is quite aware that it is pernicious and criminal. Relatively it may be extolled: absolutely it must be condemned. It is rooted in breach of troth and duty, and it bears within itself the seeds of infidelity and wrong. It has none of the inviolability and security of a lawful love. After all, Cleopatra’s gibes about Antony’s relations with “the married woman” and herself, despite their affectation of petulance, are only too much to the point, so far as he is concerned; and when she has yielded to Julius, Pompey, and Antony in turn, what guarantee has the last favourite that she will not do so again to some later supplanter? In point of fact each is untrue to the other, Antony by his marriage with Octavia, Cleopatra by her traffickings with Octavius and Thyreus.[225] She forfeits in the sequel her right to be angry at his truancy; he has forfeited in advance the right to be angry at hers. But it is their penalty that these resentments should come between them; and at the very time when they most need each other’s support, their relation, being far from the perfect kind that casts out mistrust, is vitiated by jealousy on the one side and fear on the other. She flees to the Monument, shuts herself up from his blind rage in craven panic, and seeks to save her life by lies. At the sight of the liberties she has allowed Thyreus to take, he loses himself in mad outbursts which have but a partial foundation in the facts. Then he jumps to the conclusion that she has arranged for the desertion of the sailors, and dooms her to death, when in reality she seems to know nothing about it.

Betray’d I am: O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,— Whose eye beck’d forth my wars and call’d them home; Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,— Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. (IV. xii. 24.)

These terrors and suspicions are inevitable in such love as theirs.

[225] I take it as certain that with Thyreus she is for the moment at least “a boggler,” and then she has already sent her private message to Caesar.

Or is their feeling for each other to be called love at all? The question has been asked even in regard to Antony. From first to last he is aware not only of her harmfulness but of her pravity. He is under no illusions about her cunning, her boggling, her falsity. And can this insight co-exist with devotion?

Much more frequently it has been asked in regard to Cleopatra. She frankly avows even in retrospect her policy of making him her prey. Thus does she mimic fact in her pastime:

Give me mine angle: we’ll to the river; there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws; and, as I draw them up, I’ll think them every one an Antony, And say, “Ah, ha! you’re caught.” (II. v. 10.)

Moreover, her first capture of him at that banquet where he paid his heart as ordinary, was a mere business speculation. He has been useful to her since, for he is the man to piece her opulent throne with kingdoms. When he seems lost to her, she realises that she can no longer gratify her caprices as once she did.

Alex. Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you But when you are well pleased. Cle. That Herod’s head I’ll have: but how, when Antony is gone Through whom I might command it? (III. iii. 4.)

Or, if other motives supervene, they belong to wanton whim and splendid coquetry. Her deliberate allurements, her conscious wiles, her calculated tenderness, are all employed merely to retain her command of the serviceable instrument, and at the same time minister to her vanity, since Antony would accept such a rôle only from her.

If both or either of these theories were adopted, the whole interest and dignity of the theme would be gone. If Antony were not genuinely in love, his follies and delinquencies would cast him beyond the pale of our tolerance. If Cleopatra were not genuinely in love, she would at best deserve the description of Ten Brink, “a courtesan of genius.” If the love were not mutual, Antony would be merely the toy of the courtesan, Cleopatra merely the toy of the sensualist.

But in point of fact, it is mutual and sincere. Antony’s feeling has to do with much more than the senses. It goes deeper and higher; and even when he doubts Cleopatra’s affection, he never doubts his own:

(Her) heart I thought I had, for she had mine. (IV. xiv. 16.)

Cleopatra’s feeling may have originated in self-interest and may make use of craft. But in catching Antony she has been caught herself; and though interest and vanity are not expelled, they are swallowed up in vehement admiration for the man she has ensnared. Her artifices are successful, because they are the means made use of by a heart that is deeply engaged; and it is no paradox to say that they are evidence of her sincerity. So often as she refers to her lover seriously, it is with something like adoration. After the first separation, he is her “man of men.” In her first bitterness at his marriage, she cannot let him go, for

Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon, The other way’s a Mars. (II. v. 116.)

Even when he is fallen and worsted, she has no doubt how things would go were it a merely personal contest between him and his rival. When he returns from his last victory, she greets him: “Lord of lords! O infinite virtue!” (IV. viii. 16). When he dies, the world seems to her “no better than a sty” (IV. xv. 62). When she recalls his splendour, his bounty, his joyousness, it seems not a reality, but a dream, which yet must be more than a dream.

If there be, nor ever were, one such, It’s past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine An Antony, were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy, Condemning shadows quite. (V. ii. 96.)

Various interpretations have been given of these lines, but on any possible interpretation they exalt Antony alike above fact and fancy.[226] And when we run through the whole gamut of the words and deeds of the pair, from their squabbles to their death, it seems to me possible to doubt their love only by isolating some details and considering them to the exclusion of the rest.

[226] To me the sense seems to be: Supposing the Antony I have depicted never existed, still the conception is too great to be merely my own. It must be an imagination of Nature herself, which she may be unable to embody, but which shames our puny ideals. In other words, Antony is the “form” or “type” which Nature aims at even if she does not attain. I see no reason for changing the “nor” of the first line as it is in the folio to “or.”

But the truth is that the love of Antony and Cleopatra is genuine and intense; and if it leads to shame as well as to glory, this is to be explained, apart from the circumstances of the time, apart from the characters of the lovers, in the nature of the variety to which it belongs.

Plutarch, whose thoughts when he is discussing such subjects are never far from Plato’s, has a passage in which he characterises Antony’s passion by reference to the famous metaphor in the Phaedrus.

In the ende, the horse of the minde, as Plato termeth it, that is so hard of rayne (I meane the unreyned lust of concupiscence), did put out of Antonius’ heade all honest and commendable thoughts.

Certainly it is not the milder and more docile steed that takes the lead in Antony’s affection. But it is perhaps a little surprising that Plutarch did not rather go for his Platonic illustration to the Symposium, where the disquisitions of Aristophanes and Diotima explain respectively what Antony’s love is and is not. Aristophanes, with his myth that men, once four-legged and four-armed, were split in two because they were too happy, and now are pining to find their counterparts, gives the exact description of what the love of Antony and Cleopatra is.

Each of us when separated is but the indenture of a man, having one side only like a flat-fish, and he is always looking for his other half.... When one of them finds his other half, ... the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment.[227]

And, on the other hand, Diotima’s opposite theory does not apply to this particular case, at least, to begin with or superficially:

You hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast them away, if they are evil.... For there is nothing which men love but the good.[228]

[227] Jowett’s Plato, Vol. II., pages 42-43.

[228] Ibid, pages 56-57.

We may put the case in a somewhat more popular and modern fashion. All love that really deserves the name must base more or less completely on sympathy, on what Goethe called Wahlverwandschaft, or elective affinity. But such affinity may be of different kinds and degrees, and according to its range will tend to approximate to one of two types. It may mean sympathy with what is deepest and highest in us, our aspiration after the ideal, our bent towards perfection; or it may mean sympathy with our whole nature and with all our feelings and tendencies, alike with those that are high and with those that are low. The former is the more exacting though the more beneficent. It implies the suppression and abnegation in us of much that is base, of much that is harmless, of much, even, that may be good, for the sake of the best. In it we must inure ourselves to effort and sacrifice for the sake of advance in that supersensible realm where the union took place.

The second is less austere, and, for the time being, more comprehensive. It is founded on a correspondence in all sorts of matters, great and small, noble and base, of good or of bad report. If it lacks the exclusive loftiness of the other, it affords many more points of contact and a far greater wealth of daily fellowship. And of this latter variety, the love of Antony and Cleopatra is perhaps the typical example. At first sight it is evident that they are, as we say, made for each other. They are both past the first bloom of youth. Cleopatra, whom at the outset Plutarch makes twenty-eight years of age, and of whose wrinkles and waned lip Shakespeare, though in irony and exaggeration, finds it possible to speak, has relatively reached the same period of life as Antony, whom Plutarch makes at the outset forty-three or forty-six years of age, and whom Shakespeare represents as touched with the fall of eld. And they correspond in their experiences. Neither is a novice in love and pleasure: Cleopatra, the woman with a history, Antony, the masquer and reveller of Clodius’ set, have both seen life. They are alike in their emotionalism, their impressibility, their quick wits, their love of splendour, their genial power, their intellectual scope, their zest for everything. Plutarch narrates—and it is strange that à propos of this he did not quote Aristophanes’ saying in the Symposium—

She, were it in sport, or in matter of earnest, still devised sundrie new delights to have Antonius at commaundement, never leaving him night nor day, nor once letting him go out of her sight. For she would play at dyce with him, drinke with him, and hunt commonly with him, and also be with him when he went to any exercise or activity of body. And sometime, also, when he would goe up and downe the citie disguised like a slave in the night, and would peere into poore men’s windowes and their shops, and scold and brawle with them within the house: Cleopatra would be also in a chamber-maides array, and amble up and downe the streets with him, so that oftentimes Antonius bare away both mockes and blowes.

Here we have a picture of the completest camaraderie in things serious and frivolous, athletic and intellectual, decorous and venturesome, with memories of which the play is saturated. We are witnesses of Cleopatra’s impatience when he is away for a moment: we hear of her drinking him to bed before the ninth hour, and of their outdoor sports. Antony proposes to roam the streets with her and note the qualities of the people. Perhaps it was some such expedition that gave Enobarbus material for his description:

I saw her once Hop forty paces through the public street; And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted, That she did make defect perfection, And, breathless, power breathe forth. (II. ii. 233.)

It is such doings that raise the gorge of the genteel Octavius, who has no sense for popular pleasures, whether we call them simple or vulgar. But the daughter of the Ptolemies is less fastidious, and is as ready as Antony to escape from the etiquette of the court and take her share in these unceremonious frolics. Yet it is not only these lighter moods and moments that draw them together. In the depth of his mistrust, Antony recalls the “grave charm” of his enchantress; and she, when he is no more, remembers that

his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres. (V. ii. 83.)

But what of serious and elevated they have in common gains warmth and colour by their mutual delight in much that is neither one nor other. He tells her,

But that your royalty Holds idleness your subject, I should take you For idleness itself. (I. iii. 91.)

And he pays homage to her in every mood:

Fie, wrangling queen! Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself, in thee, fair and admired! (I. i. 48.)

It is as genuine and catholic admiration as Florizel’s for Perdita:

What you do Still betters what is done.... Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens. (W.T. IV. iv. 135.)

But apart from their sincerity and range, how different are the two tributes: Florizel’s all innocence and simplicity, Antony’s raffiné and sophisticated. We feel from his words that he would endorse Shakespeare’s ambiguous praise of his own dark lady:

Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill, That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? (Sonnet CL. 5.)

Does not Enobarbus speak in almost exactly the same way of the Cleopatra that Antony adores?

Vilest things Become themselves in her; that the holy priests Bless her when she is riggish. (II. ii. 243.)

Thus the two are alike not only in great and indifferent things, but in their want of steadfastness, their want of principle, their compliance with baseness. Hence they encourage each other in what debilitates and degrades, as well as in what fortifies and exalts. At its worst their love has something divine about it, but often it seems a divine orgy rather than a divine inspiration. Not seldom does it lead to madness and ignominy. That Antony loses the world for it is a small matter and even proves his grandeur of soul. But for it, besides “offending reputation,” he profanes his inward honour as well; and that unmasks it as the Siren and Fury of their lives. Indeed, such love is self-destructive, and for it the lovers sacrifice the means of securing it against the hostile power of things. Yet, just because it is so plenary and permeating, it becomes an inspiration too. When its prodigal largesse fails, at the hour when it is stripped of its inessential charms, the lovers are thrown back on itself; and at once it elevates them both. Antony, believing Cleopatra dead, and not yet undeceived as to the part that he fancies she played at the last, thinks only of following her to entreat and obtain a reconciliation.

I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and Weep for my pardon. (IV. xiv. 44.)

When he learns that she still lives, no reproach crosses his lips for the deceit; his only wish as the blood flows from his breast is to be borne “where Cleopatra bides” to take a last farewell. He wrestles with death till he receives the final embrace:

I am dying, Egypt, dying: only I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips. (IV. xv. 18.)

Thereafter he has no thought of himself but only of her, counselling her in complete self-abnegation to seek of Caesar her honour with her safety, and recommending her to trust only Proculeius—one who, as we soon learn, would be eager to preserve her life.

And her love, too, though perhaps more fitfully, yet all the more strikingly, is deepened and solemnised by trial. After Actium it quite loses its element of mockery and petulance. Her flout at Antony’s negligence before the battle is the last we hear her utter. Henceforth, whether she protests her faith, or speeds him to the fight, or welcomes him on his return, her words have a new seriousness and weight.[229] Her feeling seems to become simpler and sincerer as her fortunes cloud, and at her lover’s death it is nature alone that triumphs. In the first shock of bereavement Iras, attempting consolation, addresses her as “Royal Egypt, Empress”; and she replies:

No more, but e’en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks And does the meanest chares. (IV. xv. 72.)

[229] Le plus grand miracle de l’amour, c’est de guérir de la coquetterie.—La Rochefoucauld.

Her grief for her great loss, a grief, perhaps, hardly anticipated by herself, is in her own eyes her teacher, and “begins to make a better life.” Even now she may falter, if the usual interpretation of her fraud with the treasure is correct. Even now, at all events, she has to be urged by the natural and royal but not quite unimpeachable motive, the dread of external disgrace. Cleopatra is very human to the last. Her weaknesses do not disappear, but they are but as fuel to the flames of her love by which they are bred and which they help to feed. It is still as the “curled Antony” she pictures her dead lover, and it is in “crown and robe” that she will receive that kiss which it is her heaven to have. But even in this there is a striking similarity to Antony’s expectation of the land where “souls do couch on flowers,” and where they will be the cynosure of the gazing ghosts. Their oneness of heart and feeling is indeed now complete, and their love is transfigured. It is at his call she comes, and his name is the last word she utters, before she lays the second asp on her arm. The most wonderful touch of all is that now she feels her right to be considered his wife. This, of course, is due to Shakespeare, but it is not altogether new. It occurs in Daniel’s tragedy, when she calls on Antony’s spirit to pray the gods on her behalf:

O if in life we could not severd be, Shall death divide our bodies now asunder? Must thine in Egypt, mine in Italy, Be kept the Monuments of Fortune’s wonder? If any powres be there whereas thou art (Sith our country gods betray our case), O worke they may their gracious helpe impart To save thy wofull wife from such disgrace.

It also occurs twice in Plutarch, from whom Daniel probably obtained it. In the Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius, he writes:[230]

Antonius first of all married two wives together, the which never Romane durst doe before, but him self.

[230] Cleopatra was actually married to Antony, as has been proved by Professor Ferrero. But Plutarch nowhere else mentions the circumstance, and it contradicts the whole tenor of his narrative.

In the biography, when Cleopatra has lifted him to the Monument, we are told:

Then she dryed up his blood that had berayed his face, and called him her Lord, her husband, and Emperour, forgetting her owne miserie and calamity for the pitie and compassion she tooke of him.

It is not, therefore, the invention of the idea, but the new position in which he introduces it, that shows Shakespeare’s genius. It has no great significance, either in Plutarch or Daniel. In the one, Cleopatra is speaking in compassion of Antony; in the other, she is bespeaking Antony’s compassion for herself. But in Shakespeare, when she scorns life for her love, and prefers honour with the aspic’s bite to safety with shame, she feels that now at last their union has the highest sanction, and that all the dross of her nature is purged away from the pure spirit:

Husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire and air: my other elements I give to baser life. (V. ii. 290.)

Truly their love, which at first seemed to justify Aristophanes against Diotima, just because it is true love, turns out to answer Diotima’s description after all. Or perhaps it rather suggests the conclusion in the Phaedrus: “I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and the highest, and the offspring of the highest; and that he who loves the beautiful, is called a lover, because he partakes of it.” Antony and Cleopatra, with all their errors, are lovers and partake of beauty, which we cannot say of the arid respectability of Octavius. It is well and right that they should perish as they do: but so perishing they have made their full atonement; and we can rejoice that they have at once triumphed over their victor, and left our admiration for them free.

CORIOLANUS

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Chapter I

POSITION OF THE PLAY BEFORE THE ROMANCES. ITS POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS

Coriolanus seems to have been first published in the folio of 1623, and is one of the sixteen plays described as not formerly “entered to other men.” In this dearth of information there has naturally been some debate on the date of its composition, yet the opinions of critics with few exceptions agree as to its general position and tend more and more to limit the period of uncertainty to a very few months.

This comparative unanimity is due to the evidence of style, versification, and treatment rather than of reminiscences and allusions. Though a fair number of the latter have been discovered or invented, some of them are vague and doubtful, some inapposite or untenable, hardly any are of value from their inherent likelihood.

Of these, one which has been considered to give the terminus a quo in dating the play was pointed out by Malone in the fable of Menenius. Plutarch’s account is somewhat bald:

On a time all the members of mans bodie, dyd rebell against the bellie, complaining of it, that it only remained in the middest of the bodie, without doing any thing, neither dyd beare any labour to the maintenaunce of the rest: whereas all other partes and members dyd labour paynefully, and was very carefull to satisfie the appetites and desiers of the bodie. And so the bellie, all this notwithstanding, laughed at their follie, and sayed: “It is true, I first receyve all meates that norishe mans bodie: but afterwardes I send it againe to the norishement of other partes of the same. Even so (quoth he) O you, my masters, and cittizens of Rome: the reason is a like betwene the Senate, and you. For matters being well digested, and their counsells throughly examined, touching the benefit of the common wealth; the Senatours are cause of the common commoditie that commeth unto every one of you.”

This is meagre compared with Shakespeare’s full-blooded and dramatic narrative, and though in any case the chief credit for the transformation would be due to the poet, who certainly contributes most of the picturesque and humorous details and all of the interruptions and rejoinders, it has been thought that he owes something to the expanded version in Camden’s Remaines concerning Britaine, which appeared in 1605.

All the members of the body conspired against the stomacke, as against the swallowing gulfe of all their labors; for whereas the eies beheld, the eares heard, the handes labored, the feete traveled, the tongue spake, and all partes performed their functions, onely the stomacke lay idle and consumed all. Here uppon they ioyntly agreed al to forbeare their labors, and to pine away their lasie and publike enemy. One day passed over, the second followed very tedious, but the third day was so grievous to them all, that they called a common Counsel; the eyes waxed dimme, the feete could not support the bodie, the armes waxed lasie, the tongue faltered, and could not lay open the matter; therefore they all with one accord desired the advise of the Heart. Then Reason layd open before them that hee against whome they had proclaimed warres, was the cause of all this their misery: For he as their common steward, when his allowances were withdrawne of necessitie withdrew theirs fro them, as not receiving that he might allow. Therefore it were a farre better course to supply him, than that the limbs should faint with hunger. So by the perswasion of Reason, the stomacke was served, the limbes comforted, and peace re-established. Even so it fareth with the bodies of Common weale; for albeit the Princes gather much, yet not so much for themselves, as for others: So that if they want, they cannot supply the want of others; therefore do not repine at Princes heerein, but respect the common good of the whole publike estate.

It has been pointed out,[231] in criticism of Malone’s suggestion, that in some respects Shakespeare’s version agrees with Plutarch’s and disagrees with Camden’s. Thus in Camden it is the stomach and not the belly that is denounced, the members do not confine themselves to words but proceed to deeds, it is not the belly but Reason from its seat in the heart that sets forth the moral. This is quite true, but no one doubted that Shakespeare got from Plutarch his general scheme; the only question is whether he fitted into it details from another source. It has also been objected that Shakespeare was quite capable of making the additions for himself; and this also is quite true as the other and more vivid additions prove, if it needed to be proved. Nevertheless, when we find Shakespeare’s expansions in the play following some of the lines laid down by Camden in the Remaines, occasionally with verbal coincidence, it seems not unlikely that the Remaines were known to him. Thus he does not treat the members like Plutarch in the mass, but like Camden enumerates them and their functions; the stomach in Camden like the belly in Shakespeare is called a gulf, a term that is very appropriate but that would not occur to everyone; the heart where Reason dwells and to which Camden’s mutineers appeal for advice, is the counsellor heart in Shakespeare’s list.[232] Moreover, it has been shown by

[231] E.g., by Delius. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in seinem Verhältness zum Coriolanus des Plutarch (Jahrbuch der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft, xi. 1876).

[232] In some respects Shakespeare’s details remind me more of Livy than either of Plutarch or Camden; e.g., “Inde apparuisse ventris quoque haud segne ministerium esse, nec magis ali quam alere eum, reddentem in omnis corporis partes hunc, quo vivimus vigemusque, divisum pariter in venas maturum confecto cibo sanguinem.” (II. 32.) Cf.

I receive the general food at first, Which you do live upon; ... ... but, if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood, ... And through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves and small inferior veins From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live. (I. i. 135 seq.)

This certainly is liker Livy than Plutarch; and besides the chances of Shakespeare having read Livy in the original, we have to bear in mind that in 1600 Philemon Holland published the Romane Historie written by Titus Livius of Padua. His version, as it is difficult to procure, may be quoted in full:

Whilome (quoth he) when as in mans bodie, all the parts thereof agreed not, as now they do in one, but each member had a several interest and meaning, yea, and a speech by it selfe; so it befel, that all other parts besides the belly, thought much and repined that by their carefulness, labor, and ministerie, all was gotten, and yet all little enough to serve it: and the bellie it selfe lying still in the mids of them, did nothing else but enjoy the delightsome pleasures brought unto her. Wherupon they mutinied and conspired altogether in this wise, That neither the hands should reach and convey food to the mouth, nor the mouth receive it as it came, ne yet the teeth grind and chew the same. In this mood and fit, whiles they were minded to famish the poore bellie, behold the other lims, yea and the whole bodie besides, pined, wasted, and fel into an extreme consumption. Then was it wel seen, that even the very belly also did no smal service, but fed the other parts, as it received food it selfe: seeing that by working and concocting the meat throughlie, it digesteth and distributeth by the veines into all parts, that fresh and perfect blood whereby we live, we like, and have our full strength. Comparing herewith, and making his application, to wit, how like this intestine, and inward sedition of the bodie, was to the full stomacke of the Commons, which they had taken and borne against the Senatours, he turned quite the peoples hearts.

Mr. Sidney Lee that there were friendly relations between the two men. So it is a conjecture no less probable than pleasing that Shakespeare owed a few hints to the great and patriotic scholar whom Ben Jonson hailed as “most reverend head.”

It is clear, however, that if the debt to Camden was more certain than it is, this would only give us the year before which Coriolanus could not have been written, and it would not of itself establish a date shortly after the publication of the Remaines. Such a date has been suggested, but the reference to Camden has been made merely auxiliary to the argument of a connection between the play and the general circumstances of the time. This surmise, for it can hardly be called more, will presently be noticed, and meanwhile it may be said that the internal evidence is all against it.

On the other hand, an excessively late date has been proposed for Coriolanus on the ground of its alleged indebtedness to the fourth edition of North, of which it is sometimes maintained that Shakespeare possessed a copy. Till 1612, Volumnia says in her great appeal:

Think now with thy selfe, how much more unfortunatly, then all the women livinge we are come hether;

but in the fourth edition this becomes unfortunate, and so Shakespeare has it:

Think with thyself How more unfortunate than all living women Are we come hither. (V. iii. 96.)

But the employment of the adjectival for the adverbial form is a very insignificant change, and is, besides, suggested by the rhythm. Moreover, such importance as it might have, is neutralised by a counter argument on similar lines, which would go to prove that one of the first two editions was used. In them Coriolanus tells Aufidius:

If I had feared death, I would not have come hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with spite and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have banished me, etc.

In 1603, this suffers the curtailment, “pricked forward with desire to be revenged, etc.” But Shakespeare says:

If I had fear’d death, of all men i’ the world I would have ’voided thee, but in mere spite, To be full quit of those my banishers, Stand I before thee here. (IV. v. 86.)

This argument is no doubt of the same precarious kind as the other; still in degree it is stronger, for the persistence of spite is much more distinctive than the disappearance of a suffix.

In any case this verbal detail is a very narrow foundation to build a theory upon, which there is nothing else to support, except one of those alluring and hazardous guesses that would account for the play in the conditions of the time. This, too, as in the previous case, may be reserved for future discussion. Meanwhile the dating of Coriolanus, subsequently to 1612, is not only opposed to internal evidences of versification and style, but would separate it from Shakespeare’s tragedies and introduce it among the romantic plays of his final period.

If, however, we turn to the supposed allusions that make for the intermediate date of 1608 or 1609, we do not find them much more satisfactory.

Thus it has been argued that the severe cold in January, 1608, when even the Thames was frozen over, furnished the simile:

You are no surer, no, Than is the coal of fire upon the ice. (I. i. 176.)

But surely there must have been many opportunities for such things to present themselves to Shakespeare’s observation or imagination, by the time that he was forty-four years old.

Again Malone found a reference to James’s proclamation in favour of breeding silk-worms and the importation of young mulberry trees during 1609, in the expression:

Now humble as the ripest mulberry That will not hold the handling. (III. ii. 79.)

But even in Venus and Adonis Shakespeare had told how, in admiration of the youth’s beauty, the birds

Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries; (1103.)

and in Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Titania orders the fairies to feed Bottom

With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. (III. i. 170.)

A third of these surmises is even more gratuitous. Chalmers calls attention to the repeated references in the play to famine and dearth, and supposes they were suggested by the scarcity which prevailed in England during the years 1608 and 1609. But the lack of corn among the people is one of the presuppositions of the story, to which Plutarch also recurs.

There is only one allusion that has strength to stand by itself, though even it is doubtful; and it belongs to a different class, for, if authentic, it is suggested not to Shakespeare by contemporary events, but to a contemporary writer by Shakespeare. Malone noticed the coincidence between the line, “He lurch’d all swords of the garland” (II. ii. 105), and a remark in Epicoene: “You have lurched your friends of the better half of the garland” (V. i.); and considered that here, as not infrequently, Ben Jonson was girding at Shakespeare. Afterwards he withdrew his conjecture because he found a similar expression in one of Nashe’s pamphlets, and concluded that it was proverbial; but it has been pointed out in answer to this[233] that Nashe has only the lurch and not the supplementary words, of the garland, while it is to the phrase as a whole, not to the component parts, that the individual character belongs. This, if not absolutely beyond challenge, is at least very cogent, and probably few will deny that Coriolanus must have been in existence before Epicoene was acted in January 1609, old style.

[233] Introduction to the Clarendon Press Edition.

How long before? And did it succeed or precede Antony and Cleopatra?

Attempts have been made to find in that play immediate anticipations of the mental attitude and of particular thoughts that appear in Coriolanus. Thus Octavia’s dilemma in her petition has been quoted:

A more unhappy lady, If this division chance, ne’er stood between, Praying for both parts: The good gods will mock me presently, When I shall pray, “O, bless my lord and husband!” Undo that prayer, by crying out as loud, “O, bless my brother!” Husband win, win brother, Prays, and destroys the prayer; no midway ’Twixt these extremes at all. (III. iv. 12.)

And this has been taken as a link with Volumnia’s perplexity:

And to poor we Thine enmity’s most capital: thou barr’st us Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort That all but we enjoy: for how can we, Alas, how can we for our country pray, Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory, Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person, Our comfort in the country. We must find An evident calamity, though we had Our wish, which side should win. (V. iii. 103.)

But then the same sort of conflict puzzles the Lady Blanch in King John:

Which is the side that I must go withal? I am with both: each army hath a hand; And in their rage, I having hold of both, They whirl asunder and dismember me. Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose; Father, I may not wish the fortune thine; Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive: Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose Assured loss before the match be play’d. (III. i. 327.)

Could not this style of argument be used to prove that Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra immediately followed King John?

Or again the contemptuous descriptions of the people by Octavius, Cleopatra and Antony himself have been treated as preludes to the more savage vituperations in Coriolanus. But Julius Caesar gives an equally unflattering account of mob law, and some of Casca’s gibes would quite fit the mouth of Coriolanus or Menenius. On these lines we should be as much entitled to make this play the direct successor of the first as of the second of its companions, a theory that would meet with scant acceptance. The truth is that whenever Shakespeare deals with the populace, he finds some one to disparage it in the mass.

Still there is little doubt that Coriolanus does occupy the position these arguments would assign to it, but the real evidence is of another kind. To begin with there is what Coleridge describes in Antony and Cleopatra as the “happy valiancy of style,” which first becomes marked in that play, which is continued in this, and which henceforth in a greater or less degree characterises all Shakespeare’s work. Then even more conclusive are the peculiarities of metre, and especially the increase in the total of weak and light endings together with the decrease of the light by themselves. Finally, there is the conduct of the story to a conclusion that proposes no enigma and inflicts no pang, but even more than in the case of Macbeth satisfies, and even more than in the case of Antony and Cleopatra uplifts the heart, without troublesome questionings on the part of the reader. “As we close the book,” says Mr. Bradley, “we feel more as we do at the close of Cymbeline than as we do at the close of Othello.” We cannot be far wrong in placing it in the last months of 1608 or the first months of 1609.

Attempts have been made to find suggestions of a personal kind for Shakespeare’s choice of the subject. The extreme ease with which they have been discovered for the various dates proposed may well teach us caution. Thus Professor Brandl who assigns it an earlier position than most critics and discusses it before Lear sees in it the outcome of events that occurred in the first years of the century.

The material for Coriolanus was perhaps put in Shakespeare’s way by a contemporary tragedy which keenly excited the Londoners, and especially the courtly and literary circles, about 1603 and 1604. Sir Walter Raleigh had been one of the most splendid gentlemen at the court of Elizabeth, was a friend of Spenser and Ben Jonson, had himself tried his hand at lyric poetry, and in addition as adventurous officer had discovered Virginia and annexed Guiana. He was the most highly considered but also the best hated man in England: for his behaviour was domineering, in the consciousness of his innate efficiency he showed without disguise his contempt for the multitude, the farm of wine-licenses granted him by the Queen had made him objectionable to the pothouse politicians, and his opposition in parliament to a bill for cheapening corn had recently drawn on him new unpopularity. He, therefore, shortly after the accession of James succumbed to the charge, that he, the scarred veteran of the Spanish wars, the zealous advocate of new expeditions against Spain, had involved himself in treasonous transactions with this, the hereditary foe of England. In November 1603 the man who had won treasure-fleets and vast regions for his country, almost fell a victim to popular rage as he was being transferred from one prison to another.[234] A month later he was condemned to death on wretched evidence: he was not yet executed however but locked up in the Tower, so that men were in suspense as to his fate for many years. To depict his character his biographer Edwards involuntarily hit on some lines of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The figure of the Roman, who had deserved well but incurred hatred, of the patriot whom his aristocratic convictions drive to the enemy, was already familiar to the dramatist from North’s translation of Plutarch; and Camden’s Remaines concerning Britaine, which had newly appeared in 1605 contributed a more detailed version of the fable of the belly and the members, first set forth by Livy. From this mood and about this time Coriolanus, for the dating of which only the very relative evidence of metre and style is available, may most probably have proceeded.[235]

[234] Strictly speaking, from the Tower to Winchester for trial.

[235] Shakespeare, in the Führende Geister Series.

In this passage, Professor Brandl has brought out some of the considerations that would lend the case of Raleigh a peculiar interest in the eyes of men like Shakespeare, and has made the most of the parallels between his story and the story of Coriolanus.[236] It is necessary of course to look away from almost all the points except those enumerated, for when we remember Sir Walter’s robust adulation of Elizabeth, and tortuous policy at court, it is difficult to pair him with the Roman who “would not flatter Neptune for his trident,” and of whom it was said, “his heart’s his mouth.” Still the analogies in career and character are there, so far as they go; but they are insufficient to prove that the actual suggested the poetical tragedy, still less to override the internal evidence, relative though that be; for they could linger and germinate in the poet’s mind to bring forth fruit long afterwards: as for example the treason and execution of Biron in 1602 inspired Chapman to write The Conspiracie and The Tragedie which were acted in 1608.

Again, in connection with what seems to be the actual date, an attempt has been made to explain one prominent characteristic of the play from a domestic experience through which Shakespeare had just passed. His mother died in September 1608, and her memory is supposed to be enshrined in the picture of Volumnia. As Dr. Brandes puts it:[237]

The death of a mother is always a mournfully irreparable loss, often the saddest a man can sustain. We can realise how deeply it would go to Shakespeare’s heart when we remember the capacity for profound and passionate feeling with which nature had blessed and cursed him. We know little of his mother; but judging from that affinity which generally exists between famous sons and their mothers, we may suppose she was no ordinary woman. Mary Arden, who belonged to an old and honourable family, which traced its descent (perhaps justly) back to the days of Edward the Confessor, represented the haughty patrician element in the Shakespeare family. Her ancestors had borne their coat of arms for centuries, and the son would be proud of his mother for this among other reasons, just as the mother would be proud of her son. In the midst of the prevailing gloom and bitterness of his spirits,[238] this fresh blow fell upon him, and out of his weariness of life as his surroundings and experiences showed it to him, recalled this one mainstay to him—his mother. He remembered all she had been to him for forty-four years, and the thoughts of the man and the dreams of the poet were thus led to dwell upon the significance in a man’s life of this unique form, comparable to no other—his mother. Thus it was that, although his genius must follow the path it had entered upon and pursue it to the end, we find, in the midst of all that was low and base in his next work, this one sublime mother-form, the proudest and most highly-wrought that he has drawn, Volumnia.

[236] Rather more than the most. It is special pleading to interpret Raleigh’s arguments against the Act for sewing Hemp and the Statute of Tillage in 1601, as directed against cheap corn. His point was rather that coercive legislation in regard to agriculture hindered production and was oppressive to poor men. Nor am I aware that his speeches on these occasions increased his unpopularity,—which, no doubt, was already great.

[237] William Shakespeare, a critical study.

[238] In point of fact “gloom and bitterness” can be less justly attributed to Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus than to any of the later tragedies, and less justly to Coriolanus than to Antony and Cleopatra; but Dr. Brandes treats Troilus and Cressida as coming between them, and if that position could be vindicated for it, the phrase would be defensible.

Thus Shakespeare, in a mood of pessimism, and in the desolation of bereavement, turned to a subject that he treated on its seamy side, but redeemed from its meanness by exalting the idea of the mother in obedience to his own pious regrets. Even, however, if we grant the assumptions in regard to Mary Arden’s pedigree and her aristocratic family pride, and the unique support she gave to her son, does this statement give a true account of the impression the play produces? Is it the fact that, apart from the figure of Volumnia, the story is “low and base,” and is it not rather the record of grand though perverted heroism? Is it the fact that Volumnia stands out as a study of motherhood, such as the first heartache at a mother’s death would inspire? The most sympathetic traits in her portrait are drawn by Plutarch. Shakespeare’s many touches supply the harshness, the ambition, the prejudice. If these additions are due to Shakespeare’s wistful broodings on his own mother, a woman with a son of genius may well hope that he will never brood on her.

Then, especially by those who advocate a later date for the play, a political motive for it has been discovered. Mr. Whitelaw, who would assign it to 1610, when James’s first parliament was dissolved, conjectures that “in Coriolanus Shakespeare intended a two-fold warning, to the pride of James, and to the gathering resistance of the Commons.”[239] Mr. Garnett,[240] on the other hand, maintains that “Coriolanus, to our apprehension, manifestly reflects the feelings of a conservative observer of the contests between James and his refractory parliaments,” and placing it after the Tempest, would connect it with the dissolution of the Addled Parliament in 1614. But since the friction between King and Commons, though it intensified with the years, was seldom entirely absent, this theory adapts itself pretty well to any date, and Dr. Brandes, while refusing to trace the spirit of the play to any “momentary political situation,” adopts the general principle as quite compatible with the state of affairs in 1608. He puts the case as follows:

Was it Shakespeare’s intention to allude to the strained relations existing between James and his parliament? Does Coriolanus represent an aristocratically-minded poet’s side-glance at the political situation in England? I fancy it does. Heaven knows there was little resemblance between the amazingly craven and vacillating James and the haughty, resolute hero of Roman tradition, who fought a whole garrison single-handed. Nor was it personal resemblance which suggested the comparison, but a general conception of the situation as between a beneficent power on the one hand, and the people on the other. He regarded the latter wholly as mob, and looked upon their struggle for freedom as mutiny, pure and simple.

[239] Coriolanus. Rugby Edition.

[240] In the conclusion of his essay on the Date and Occasion of the Tempest. Universal Review, 1889.

This theory, however, in all its varieties seems to attribute too definite an influence to the controversies of the hour, and to turn Shakespeare too much into the politician prepense. Certainly Coriolanus is not meant to be a constitutional manifesto; probably it does not, even at unawares, idealise a contemporary dispute; it is hardly likely that Shakespeare so much as intrudes conscious allusions to the questions then at issue. And this on account not only of the particular opinions attributed to him, but, much more, of his usual practice in poetic creation. Do any of these alleged incentives in the circumstances, public or private, of his life go far to explain his attraction to a story and selection of it, its power over him and his power over it? Doubtless in realising the subject that took his fancy, he would draw on the stores of his experience as well as his imagination. In dealing with the tragedy of a proud and unpopular hero of antiquity, very possibly he would be helped by what he knew of the tragedy of a proud and unpopular worthy of his own time. In dealing with the influence of a mother and the reverence of a son, very probably the memories of his own home would hover before his mind. In dealing with the plebeians and patricians of Rome, he would inevitably fill in the details from his knowledge of the burgesses and nobles of England, and he might get hints for his picture of the bygone struggle, from the struggle that he himself could watch. But it is the story of Coriolanus that comes first and that absorbs all such material into itself, just as the seed in its growth assimilates nourishment from the earth and sunshine and rain. These things are not the seed. The experiences are utilised in the interest of the play; the play is not utilised in the interest of the experiences.

It is particularly important to emphasise this in view of the circumstance that Coriolanus has often been regarded as a drama of principles rather than of character, even by those who refrain from reading into it any particular reference. But Shakespeare’s supreme preoccupation is always with his fable, which explains, and is explained by, human nature in action. He does not set out to commend or censure or examine a precept or a theory or a doctrine. Of course the life of men is concerned with such matters, and he could not exclude them without being untrue to his aim. Thus, to take the most obvious example, it is impossible to treat of character with a total omission of ethical considerations, since character is connected with conduct, and conduct has its ethical aspect; and, indeed, success in getting to the truth of character depends very much on the keenness of the moral insight. It is very largely Shakespeare’s moral insight that gives him his unrivalled position among the interpreters of men; and we may, if we like, derive any number of improving lessons from his works. But he is an artist, not a moralist; and he wrote for the story, not for the moral. Just in the same way an architect seeks to design a beautiful or convenient building, not to illustrate mechanical laws. Nevertheless, in proportion as these are neglected, the building will not rise or will not last; and if they are obeyed, however unconsciously, the illustration of them will be provided. In Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, when Caroline gives Robert Moore this very play to read, he asks, “Is it to operate like a sermon?” And she answers: “It is to stir you; to give you new sensations. It is to make you feel life strongly”—(that is the main thing, and then comes the indirect consequence)—“not only your virtues but your vicious perverse points.”

Now just as in all Shakespeare’s dramas, though or rather because they are personal, the ethical considerations cannot be excluded; so in a drama that moves through a constitutional crisis, though or rather because it, too, is personal, political considerations cannot be excluded. They are there, though it is on the second plane. And just as his general delineation of character would be unsatisfactory if his moral insight were at fault, so his delineation of the characters that play their part in this history would be unsatisfactory if his political insight were at fault. He is not necessarily bound to appreciate correctly the conditions that prevailed in reality or by report: that is required only for historical accuracy or fidelity to tradition. But he is bound to appreciate the conditions as he imagines them, and not to violate in his treatment of them the principles that underlie all political society.

Yet this he has been accused of doing. He has been charged with a hatred of the people that is incompatible even with a benevolent tyranny, and with a glorification of the protagonist’s ruthless disregard of popular claims. Thus Dr. Brandes, in the greater part of a chapter, dwells upon Shakespeare’s “physical aversion for the atmosphere of the people,” and “the absence of any humane consideration for the oppressed condition of the poor”; and, on the other hand, upon his “hero-worship” for Marcius, whom he glorifies as a demi-god. Though admitting the dramatist’s detestation of the crime of treason, this critic sees no implicit censure of what preceded it. To him Shakespeare’s impression of life as conveyed in the play is that “there must of necessity be formed round the solitary great ones of the earth, a conspiracy of envy and hatred raised by the small and mean.”

It is no doubt true that this and many other Shakespearian plays abound in hostile or scornful vituperation of the people; and not only of their moral and mental demerits; their sweaty clothes, their rank breaths, their grossness and uncleanness are held up to derision and execration. But are we to attribute these sentiments to Shakespeare? Such utterances are ex hypothesi dramatic, and show us merely the attitude of the speakers, who are without exception men of the opposite camp or unfriendly critics. Only once does Shakespeare give his personal, or rather, impersonal estimate. It is in the Induction to the second part of Henry IV., when Rumour, whose words, in this respect at least, cannot be influenced by individual bias, speaks of

the blunt monster of uncounted heads, The still-discordant, wavering multitude. (line 18.)

That is, the populace as a whole is stupid, disunited, fickle. And this is how, apart from the exaggerations of their opponents, Shakespeare invariably treats crowds of citizens, whether in the ancient or modern world. He therefore with perfect consistency regards them as quite unfit for rule, and when they have it or aspire to it, they cover themselves with ridicule or involve themselves in crime. But this is by no means to hate them. On the contrary he is kindly enough to individual representatives, and he certainly believes in the sacred obligation of governing them for their good. Where then are the governors to be found? Shakespeare answers: in the royal and aristocratic classes. It is the privilege and duty of those born in high position to conduct the whole community aright. Shakespeare can do justice to the Venetian oligarchy and the English monarchy. But while to him the rule of the populace is impossible, he also recognises that nobles and kings may be unequal to their task. The majority of his kings indeed are more or less failures; his nobles—and in this play, the patricians—often cut a rather sorry figure. In short, popular government must be wrong, but royal or aristocratic government need not be right.

And this was exactly what historical experience at the time seemed to prove. The Jacqueries, the Peasants’ Wars, the Wat Tyler or Jack Cade Insurrections, were not calculated to commend democratic experiments; and, on the other hand, the authority of king and nobles had often, though not always, secured the welfare of the state.

Now, holding these opinions, would Shakespeare be likely to glorify Coriolanus? Of course, in a sense he does. There is a Lues Boswelliana to which the dramatist like the biographer should and must succumb. He must have a fellow-feeling for his hero and understand from within all that can be urged on his behalf. So Shakespeare glorifies Coriolanus in the same way that he glorifies Hamlet or Brutus or Antony. That is, he appreciates their greatness and explains their offences so that we sympathise with them and do not regard them as unaccountable aberrations; but offences they remain and they are not extenuated. On the contrary they receive all due prominence and are shown to bring about the tragic catastrophe. This is even more the case with Coriolanus than with some of the others. So much stress is laid on his violence and asperities that to many he is antipathetic, and the antipathy is reflected on the cause that he champions. Gervinus says very truly:

It will be allowed that from the example of Brutus many more would be won over to the cause of the people, than would be won over to aristocratic principles by Coriolanus.

Quite apart from the final apostasy he strikes the unprejudiced reader as an example to eschew rather than to imitate. Charlotte Brontë, not a Shakespearian scholar but a woman of no less common sense than genius, gives the natural interpretation of his career in the passage I have already referred to. After Caroline and Moore have finished the play, she makes the former ask concerning the hero:

“Was he not faulty as well as great?” Moore nodded. “And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What caused him to be banished by his countrymen?”

She answers her own question by quoting Aufidius’ estimate, and proceeds:

“And you must not be proud to your work people; you must not neglect the chance of soothing them; and you must not be of an inflexible nature, uttering a request as austerely as if it were a command.”

That, so far as it goes, is a quite legitimate “moral” to draw from the story; and it is the obvious one.

How then does Shakespeare conceive the political situation? On the one side there is a despised and famished populace, driven by its misery to demand powers in the state that it cannot wisely use, and trusting to leaders that are worse than itself. On the other side there is a prejudiced aristocracy, numbering competent men in its ranks, but disorganised and, to some extent, demoralised by plebeian encroachments, so that it can no longer act with its old efficiency and consistency. And there is one great aristocrat, pre-eminently consistent and efficient, but whose greatness becomes mischievous to himself and others, partly because it is out of harmony with the times, partly because it is corrupted by his inordinate pride. And to all these persons, or groups of persons, Shakespeare’s attitude, as we shall see, is at once critical and sympathetic. Admitting the conditions, we can only agree with Coleridge’s verdict: “This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare’s politics.[241] And there is no reason why the conditions should not be admitted. It is easy to imagine a society in which the masses are not yet ripe for self-government, and in which the classes are no longer able to steer the state, while a gifted and bigoted champion of tradition only makes matters worse. Indeed, something similar has been exemplified in history oftener than once or twice. Whether in point of fact Shakespeare’s conception is correct for the particular set of circumstances he describes is quite another question, that concerns neither the excellence of Coriolanus as a drama nor the fairness of its political views, but solely its fidelity to antiquarian truth and the accuracy of its antiquarian data.”

[241] Notes on Plays of Shakespere, 1818.

Clearly it was impossible for Shakespeare to revive the spirit of the times in Coriolanus, even to the extent that he had done so in Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra, for the simple reason that in them, with whatever trespasses into fiction on the part of himself or his authority, he was following the record of what had actually taken place, while now he was dealing with a legend that seems to have the less foundation in fact the more it is examined. The tribunate, with the establishment of which the whole action begins, the opposition to which by Marcius is his main offence, and the occupants of which play so important a part in the proceedings, is now generally held to be of much later origin than the supposed date of the story. There is no agreement as to the names of the chief persons; Coriolanus is Cneius or Caius, his mother is Veturia or Volumnia, his wife is Volumnia or Vergilia, the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius or Amfidius or Attius Tullius. Even the appellation Coriolanus rouses suspicion, for the bestowal of such titles seems to have been unknown till long afterwards, and, in the view of some, points not to conquest but to origin; and there are contradictory accounts of the hero’s end. It has been conjectured[242] that the whole story arose in connection with religious observances and contains a large mythological admixture; and we may remember how at the end it is associated with the erection of the temple to Fortuna Muliebris.

[242] By Ettore Pais. Storia di Roma. Vol. I.

This much at least is beyond doubt, that the account given by Plutarch, from whom Shakespeare took his material, and even by Livy, whom he may have read, has much less matter-of-fact reality than characterises the later Roman lives. There are many discrepancies and contradictions, especially in Plutarch’s description. Now he gives what we may consider an idealised picture of the plebs, attributing to it extraordinary self-control and sagacity, and again it is to him merely the rascal vulgar. Now he seems to approve the pliancy which the Senate showed on the advice of the older and wiser men, and again he seems to blame it as undignified. And the mixture of bravado and pusillanimity during the siege is almost unintelligible. Now the city sends the humblest embassages to the rebel, now it haughtily refuses to treat till he has withdrawn from Roman soil, and again it despatches what North calls “a goodly rabble of superstition and priestes” with new supplications.

From a narrative that teemed with incongruities like the above, Shakespeare was entitled to select the alternatives that would combine to a harmonious whole, and he rightly chose those that were nearest to his own comprehension and experience, though perhaps in doing so he failed to make the most of such elements of historic truth as the tradition may contain, and certainly effaced some of the antique colouring.

But if Plutarch’s Coriolanus has less foundation in fact than some of the later Lives, it is not without compensating advantages. The circumstance that it is in so large measure a legend, implies that the popular imagination has been busy working it up, and it already falls into great scenic crises which lend themselves of their own accord to the dramatist’s art. It is rather remarkable in view of this that it had received so little attention from the tragedians of the time. Perhaps its two-fold remoteness, from worldwide historical issues on the one hand, and from specifically romantic feeling on the other, may have told against it. The stories of Lucretia and Virginia had as primitive and circumscribed a setting, and were nevertheless popular enough: but they have an emotional interest that appeals to the general taste. The story of Julius Caesar lacks the sentimental lure, but concerns such mighty issues that it was the best beloved of all. And next comes the story of Antony and Cleopatra, which in a high degree unites both attractions. But Coriolanus, even as treated by Shakespeare, is unsympathetic to many, and the legend is of so little historic significance that it is often omitted from modern handbooks of Roman history; so, for these reasons, despite its pre-eminent fitness for the stage, it was generally passed over.

Not universally, however. It seems already to have engaged the attention of one important dramatist in France, the prolific and gifted Alexandre Hardy. Hardy began to publish his works only in 1623, and the volume containing his Coriolan appeared only in 1625; so there is hardly any possibility of Shakespeare’s having utilised this play. And, on the other hand, it was certainly written before 1608, probably in the last years of the sixteenth century, but in any case by 1607, so there is even less possibility of its being influenced by Shakespeare’s treatment. All the more interesting is it to observe the coincidences that exist between them, and that are due to their having selected a great many of the same motifs from Plutarch’s story. It shows that in that story Plutarch met the playwright half way, and justifies the statement of Hardy in his argument that “few subjects are to be found in Roman history which are worthier of the stage.”[243] The number of subsequent French dramas with Coriolanus as hero proves that he was right, though in England, as so frequently, Shakespeare’s name put a veto on new experiments.

Hardy’s tragedy in style and structure follows the Senecan manner of Jodelle and Garnier, but he compromised with mediaeval fashions in so far as to adopt the peculiar modification of the “simultaneous” or “complex” decoration which is usual in his other plays. In accordance with that, several scenes were presented at the same time on the stage, and actors made their first speeches from the area appropriated to that one of them which the particular phase of the action required. There was thus considerable latitude in regard to the unity of place, and even more in regard to the unity of time; but the freedom was not so great as in the Elizabethan theatre, for after all there was space only for a limited number of scenes, or “mansions” as they would formerly have been called. Generally there were five, two at each side and one at the back. In the Coriolan there were six, and there is as well a seventh place indicated in the play without scenical decoration.[244] Even so they are few, compared with the two and twenty[245] that Shakespeare employs; and though no doubt that number might be considerably reduced without injury to the effect, by running together localities that approximate in character and position, one street with another street, the forum with a public place and the like, still it would in any case exceed what Hardy allows himself. This may account for some of his omissions as compared with Shakespeare.

[243] See Théâtre d’Alexandre Hardy, ed. Stengel.

[244] See M. Rigal’s admirable treatise on Hardy.

[245] Of course these scenes are not marked in the folio, but on the whole there are good grounds for the division that has been adopted by modern editors.

His scenarium includes the house of Coriolanus and the forum at Rome, the house of Coriolanus and the house of Amfidius at Antium, the Volscian camp near Rome, the council-hall at Antium, and in addition to these an indeterminate spot where Coriolanus soliloquises after his expulsion.[246] There is no room for Corioli, and this may be why Hardy begins somewhat later than Shakespeare with the collision between the hero and the people, and gets as far as the banishment by the end of the first act. In the second, Marcius leaves Rome, presents himself to Amfidius, and obtains the leadership of the Volscians. The third portrays the panic of the Romans and the reception of their embassage by Coriolanus. In the fourth, the Roman ladies make ready to accompany Volumnia on her mission, Amfidius schemes to use all Coriolanus’ faults for his destruction, Volumnia arrives in the camp and makes her petition, which her son at length grants though he foresees the result. The fifth is occupied with his murder in the Senate House at Antium, and concludes with his mother’s reception of the news.

[246] See footnote 2 on previous page.

Thus the sequence and selection of episodes are much the same in the two tragedies, except that Hardy, perhaps, as I have said, owing to the exigencies of his decorative system, does not begin till the exploit at Corioli is over, and adds, as he could do so by using once more Coriolanus’ house in Rome, the final scene with Volumnia. Otherwise the scaffolding of the plays is very similar, and it is because both follow closely the excellent guidance of Plutarch. But it is interesting also to note that some of their additions are similar, for when they were independently made, it shows how readily Plutarch’s narrative suggested such supplements. Thus, as in Shakespeare, but not as in Plutarch, Volumnia counsels her son to bow his pride before the people, and he, though in the end consenting, at first refuses.

Volomnie. Voicy le jour fatal qui te donne (mon fils) Par une humilité tes hayneurs deconfits; Tu vaincras, endurant, la fiere ingratitude Et le rancoeur malin de ceste multitude. Tu charmes son courroux d’une submission; Helas! ne vueille donc croire à ta passion. Cede pour un moment, et la voila contente, Et tu accoiseras une horrible tourmente, Que Rome divisée ébranle à ton sujet: La pieté ne peut avoir plus bel objet, Et faire mieux paroistre à l’endroit d’une mere, A l’endroit du païs, qu’escoutant ma priere. Coriolan. Madame, on me verroit mille morts endurer, Plustôt que suppliant sa grace procurer, Plustôt qu’un peuple vil à bon tiltre se vante D’avoir en mon courage imprimé l’épouvante, Que ceux qui me devroient recognoistre seigneur, Se prévallent sur moy du plus petit honneur: Moy, fléchir le genoüil devant une commune! Non, je ne le veux faire, et ne crains sa rancune.

Thus Coriolanus, again as in Shakespeare but not as in Plutarch, accepts his banishment as a calamity to those that inflict it.

Je luy obeirai, ouy ouy, je mettrai soin De quitter ces ingrats plustost qu’ils n’ont besoin.

Thus the machinations of Amfidius before the final cause of offence are amplified far beyond the limits of Plutarch, and these are in part excused by his previous rivalry with Coriolanus which, as in Shakespeare, is made ever so much more personal and graphic.

Un esperon d’honneur cent fois nous a conduits, Aveugles de fureur, à ces termes reduits De sentre-deffier[247] au front de chaque armée, Vouloir mourir, ou seul vaincre de renommée.

In short, though Hardy’s drama, as compared with Shakespeare’s, is a work of talent as compared with a work of genius, it shows that the Life had in it the material for a tragedy already rough-dressed, with indications, obvious to a practised playwright, of some of the processes that still were needed.

Shakespeare, then, was now dealing with a much more tractable theme than in his previous Roman plays, and this is evident in the finished product. Technically and artistically it is a more perfect achievement than either of them. In Julius Caesar the early disappearance of the titular hero does not indeed affect the essential unity of the piece, but it does, when all is said and done, involve, to the feelings of most readers, a certain break in the interest. In Antony and Cleopatra the scattering of the action through so many short scenes does not interfere with the main conception, but it does make the execution a little spasmodic. In both instances Shakespeare had to suit his treatment to the material. But that material in the case of Coriolanus offered less difficulty. It lay ready to the dramatist’s hand and took the shape that he imposed, almost of itself. The result is a masterpiece that, as an organic work of art, has been placed on the level of Shakespeare’s most independent tragedies.[248]

[247] S’entre-défier.

[248] E.g. by Viehoff, in his interesting essay, Shakespeare’s Coriolan (Jahrbuch der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft, Bd. iv. 1869), which has been used in the following paragraphs.

Thus it is easy to see how the personality of the hero dominates the complex story, as the heart transmits the life-blood through the body and its members, and receives it back again; how his character contains in itself the seeds of his offence and its reparation; how the other figures are related to him in parallel and contrast; how the two grand interests, the conflict between Coriolanus and Aufidius, the conflict between Coriolanus and the people, intertwine, but always so that the latter remains the principal strand; how the language is suited to the persons, the circumstances, and the prevailing tone. In short, whatever the relations in which we consider the play, they seem, like the radii of a circle, to depart from and meet in one centre.

Hardly less admirable are the balance and composition of the whole, which yet in no wise impair the interest of the individual scenes. Dr. Johnson indeed makes the criticism: “There is perhaps too much bustle in the first act and too little in the last.” This possibly is more noticeable when the play is acted than when it is read; but it is fitting that from the noise and hubbub of the struggle there should be a transition to the outward quietude of the close that harmonises with the inward acquiescence in the mind of reader or spectator. Nor is the element of tumult entirely lacking at the last. To the uproar in the street of Rome, where the life of Marcius is threatened, corresponds the uproar in the public place of Antium where it is actually taken. But Dr. Johnson was probably thinking of those battle scenes beloved by Elizabethan audiences and generally wearisome to modern taste. There are no fewer than five of them in the first act, a somewhat plentiful allowance. But they are written by no means exclusively in the drum-and-trumpet style. On the contrary they are rich in psychological interest, and bring home to us many characteristics of the hero that we have to realise. Not only are we witnesses of his prowess, but his pride in Rome, his contempt of baseness, his rivalry with Aufidius, his power of rousing enthusiasm in the field, are all shown in relief. Such things lift these concessions to temporary fashion above the level of outworn crudities.

And the construction is very perfect too. Perhaps the crisis, understood as the acme of Coriolanus’ success, when he is voted to the consulship in the middle of the third scene of the second act comes a little early. But crisis may bear another meaning. It may denote the decisive point of the conflict, and this is only reached in the centre of the play. To the supreme tension of the scenes that describe Coriolanus’ denunciation of the Tribunes, the consultations in his house, his final condemnation, all that goes before gradually leads up, and from that all that follows after gradually declines. In the first act we are introduced to the circumstances, the opposition between the Romans and the Volsces, the Senate and the Plebs, and to all the leading characters, as well as Coriolanus and his friends and opponents, in an exposition that is not merely declaratory but is full of action and life: and we see that the situation is fraught with danger. In the second act we are shown more definitely how the grand disaster will come from the collision of Coriolanus with the people, and the cloud gathers even in the instant of his success. In the third the storm breaks, and, despite a momentary lull, in the end sweeps away all wonted landmarks. The fourth presents the change that follows in the whole condition of things: the rival of Aufidius has recourse to his generosity, the champion of Rome becomes her foe, and the people, after its heedless triumph, is plunged into dismay. In the fifth we proceed by carefully considered ways to the catastrophe: the deliverance of Rome from material and the hero from moral perdition, the expiation of his passion in death and the fruitless triumph of his rival.

But through this symmetrical rise and fall of the excitement, there is no abatement of the interest. Attention and suspense are always kept on the alert. They are secured partly by the diversity of the details and the swiftness of the fluctuations. Dr. Johnson says:

The Tragedy of Coriolanus is one of the most amusing of our author’s performances. The old man’s merriment in Menenius, the lofty lady’s dignity in Volumnia, the bridal modesty in Virgilia, the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus, the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety; and the various revolutions of the hero’s fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity.

This is so because, while the agitation culminates in the third act, the emotion is neither overtaxed in the two that precede nor allowed to subside in the two that follow. For though this movement, first of intensification, then of relaxation, is discernible in the play as a whole, it is not uniform or uninterrupted. There is throughout a throb and pulse, an ebb and flow. The quieter scenes alternate with the more vehement: Coriolanus’ fortune by turns advances and retires. Only when we reflect do we become aware that we have risen so high out of our daily experience, and have returned “with new acquist” of wisdom to a spot whence we can step back to it once more.

But to produce so consummate a masterpiece from the material of history, no matter how dramatic that material was, Shakespeare was bound to reshape it more freely than he was wont to do when dealing with historical themes. We have seen from Hardy’s example what stores of half-wrought treasure Plutarch’s narrative offered to a dramatist who knew his business. Still it was only half-wrought, and in working it up Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously allowed himself more liberties than in his other Roman plays. His loans indeed are none the fewer or the less on that account; nowhere has he borrowed more numerous or so lengthy passages. But it almost seems as though with the tact of genius he had the feeling that he was at work, not on fact, but on legend. Though he is far from recasting the Roman tradition as he recast the pseudo-historic traditions of his own island in Lear and Macbeth, yet he gives a new colouring to the picture as he hardly does to genuine histories like Richard II. or Antony and Cleopatra.

This will appear from a comparison of the play with the Life.

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II. PARALLELS AND CONTRASTS WITH PLUTARCH

The first impression produced by a comparison of the biography and the play is that the latter is little more than a scenic replica of the former. Shakespeare has indeed absorbed so many suggestions from the translation that it is difficult to realise how much he has modified them, or to avoid reading these modifications into his authority when we try to distinguish what he has received from what he has supplied. And the illusion is confirmed by the frequency with which we light on familiar words, familiar traits, familiar incidents. For the similarity seems at first to pervade the language, the characterisation, and the action.[249]

[249] A good many of the parallels and contrasts noted in this chapter are to be found in the excellent paper by Delius already cited.

In the language it is most marked. Nowhere has Shakespeare borrowed so much through so great a number of lines as in Volumnia’s appeal to the piety of her son. This passage, even if it stood alone, would serve to make the play a notable example of Shakespeare’s indebtedness to North.[250] But it does not stand alone. Somewhat shorter, but still longer than any loan in the other plays, is Coriolanus’ announcement of himself to Aufidius, and in it Shakespeare follows North even more closely than in the former instance.

[250] See Appendix B.

If thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing me, dost not perhappes beleeve me to be the man I am in dede, I must of necessitie bewraye my selfe to be that I am. I am that Caius Martius, who hath done to thy self particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, great hurte and mischief, which I cannot denie for my surname of Coriolanus that I beare. For I never had other benefit nor recompence, of all the true and paynefull service I have done, and the extreme daungers I have bene in, but this only surname: a good memorie and witnes, of the malice and displeasure thou showldest beare me. In deede the name only remaineth with me: for the rest, the envie and crueltie of the people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufference of the dastardlie nobilitie and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the people. This extremitie hath now driven me to come as a poore suter, to take thy chimney harthe, not of any hope I have to save my life thereby. For if I had feared death, I would not have come hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with strife and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have banished me, whom now I beginne to be avenged on, putting my persone betweene their enemies. Wherefore, if thou hast any harte to be wrecked[251] of the injuries thy enemies have done thee, spede thee now, and let my miserie serve thy turne, and so use it, as my service maye be a benefit to the Volsces: promising thee, that I will fight with better good will for all you, then ever I dyd when I was against you, knowing that they fight more valliantly, who know the force of their enemie, then such as have never proved it. And if it be so that thou dare not, and that thou art wearye to prove fortune any more; then am I also weary to live any lenger. And it were no wisedome in thee, to save the life of him, who hath bene heretofore thy mortall enemie, and whose service now can nothing helpe nor pleasure thee.

[251] wreaked, avenged.

Shakespeare gives little else than a transcript, though, of course, a poetical and dramatic transcript, of this splendid piece of forthright prose.

Coriolanus. If, Tullus, Not yet thou knowest me, and, seeing me, dost not Think me for the man I am, necessity Commands me name myself. Aufidius. What is thy name? Coriolanus. A name unmusical to the Volscians’ ears, And harsh in sound to thine. Aufidius. Say, what’s thy name? Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face Bears a command in’t: though thy tackle’s torn, Thou show’st a noble vessel: what’s thy name? Coriolanus. Prepare thy brow to frown; know’st thou me yet? Aufidius. I know thee not: thy name? Coriolanus. My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces Great hurt and mischief: thereto witness may My surname, Coriolanus: the painful service, The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood Shed for my thankless country are requited But with that surname; a good memory, And witness of the malice and displeasure Which thou should’st bear me: only that name remains; The cruelty and envy of the people, Permitted by our dastard nobles, who Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest: And suffer’d me by the voice of slaves to be Whoop’d out of Rome. Now this extremity Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope— Mistake me not—to save my life, for if I had fear’d death, of all men i’ the world I would have ’voided thee, but in mere spite, To be full quit of those my banishers, Stand I before thee now. Then if thou hast A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight, And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it That my revengeful services may prove As benefits to thee, for I will fight Against my canker’d country with the spleen Of all the under fiends. But if so be Thou darest not this and that to prove more fortunes Thou’rt tired, then, in a word, I also am Longer to live most weary, and present My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice; Which not to cut would show thee but a fool, Since I have ever follow’d thee with hate, Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country’s breast And cannot live but to thy shame, unless It be to do thee service. (IV. v. 60.)

As much material, though it is amplified and rearranged, has been incorporated, as we shall have to point out, in Coriolanus’ invective against the tribunate and the distribution of corn. Within a narrower compass we see the same adherence to North’s phraseology in Brutus’ instructions to the people, where, very notably, Shakespeare’s fidelity to his author has made it possible to supply an omission in the text with absolute certainty as to the sense and great probability as to the wording. The opening sentences of the Life run as follows:

The house of the Martians at Rome was of the number of the patricians, out of the which hath sprong many noble personages: whereof Ancus Martius was one, King Numaes daughters sonne, who was king of Rome after Tullus Hostilius. Of the same house were Publius, and Quintus, who brought Rome their best water they had by conducts. Censorinus also came of that familie, that was so surnamed, bicause the people had chosen him Censor twise.

Shakespeare puts the notifications in the Tribune’s mouth:

Say we read lectures to you, How youngly he began to serve his country, How long continued, and what stock he springs of, The noble house o’ the Marcians, from whence came That Ancus Martius, Numa’s daughter’s son, Who, after great Hostilius, here was king: Of the same house Publius and Quintus were, That our best water brought by conduits hither: _And Nobly nam’d, so twice being Censor, Was his great Ancestor_. (II. iii. 242.)

Many editors saw that something had dropped out, but no attempt to fill the gap was satisfactory, till Delius, having recourse to North, supplemented,

[And Censorinus, that was so surnamed] And nobly named so, twice being censor.[252]

[252] This seems preferable to the reading of the Cambridge Editors

And [Censorinus,] nobly named so, Twice being [by the people chosen] censor.

In the first place it is closer to North, and agrees with Shakespeare’s usual practice of keeping to North’s words so far as possible. In the second place, it is closer to the Folio text, involving only the displacement of a comma. In the third place, it is simpler to suppose that a whole single line has been missed out than that parts of two have been amputated, and the remainders run together.

These lines also show how Shakespeare reproduces Plutarch’s statement even when they are for him not quite in keeping. Plutarch, writing in the second century, could instance Publius, Quintus and Censorinus as ornaments of the Marcian gens; but Brutus’ reference to them is an anachronism as they come after the supposed date of the play. So too Plutarch says of the attack on the Romans before Corioli:

But Martius being there at that time, ronning out of the campe with a fewe men with him, he slue the first enemies he met withall, and made the rest of them staye upon a sodaine, crying out to the Romaines that had turned their backes, and calling them againe to fight with a lowde voyce. For he was even such another, as Cato would have a souldier and a captaine to be: not only terrible, and fierce to laye about him, but to make the enemie afeard with the sounde of his voyce, and grimnes of his countenaunce.

Shakespeare makes short work of chronology by putting this allusion into the mouth of Titus Lartius:

Thou wast a soldier Even to Cato’s[253] wish, not fierce and terrible Only in strokes; but, with thy grim looks, and The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds, Thou madest thine enemies shake, as if the world Were feverous and did tremble. (I. iv. 56.)

Occasionally even mistakes in North’s text or marginal notes, or in Shakespeare’s interpretation or recollection of what he had read, have passed into the play. Thus it has been shown[254] that North, owing to a small typographical error in the French, misunderstood the scope of Cominius’ offer to Marcius. Amyot says:

[253] Here again Plutarch has furnished an emendation: Folio, Calues.

[254] By Büttner, Zu Coriolan und seiner Quelle (Jhrbch. der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft, Bd. xli. 1905).

“Et en fin lui dit, que de tous les cheveaux prisonniers, et autres biens qui avoient esté pris et gaignés en grande quantité, il en choisist dix de chaque sorte à sa volonté, avant que rien en fust distribué, ni desparti aux autres.”

There should be a comma after cheveaux, as appears on reference to the Greek,[255] and Marcius is told to select ten of the horses, prisoners, and other chattels; but North took the prisonniers as used adjectivally in agreement with the preceding noun and translated:

So in the ende he willed Martius, he should choose out of all the horses they had taken of their enemies, and of all the goodes they had wonne (whereof there was great store) tenne of every sorte which he liked best, before any distribution should be made to other.

[255] πολλῶν χρημάτων καὶ ἵππων γεγονότων αἰχμαλώτων καὶ ἀνθρώπων, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν ἐξελέσθαι δέκα πάντα πρὸ τοῦ νέμειν τοῖς πολλοῖς. Ἄνευ δὲ ἐκείνων ἀριστεῖον αὐτῷ κεκοσμημένον ἵππον ἐδωρήσατο.

Further there is the quite incorrect abridgment in the margin:

The tenth parte of the enemies goods offered Martius for rewarde of his service by Cominius the Consul.

Shakespeare combines these misstatements:

Of all the horses, Whereof we have ta’en good and good store, of all The treasure in this field achieved and city, We render you the tenth, to be ta’en forth, Before the common distribution, at Your only choice. (I. ix. 31.)

Of great frequency are the short sentences from North that are embedded in Shakespeare’s dialogue. Thus, the preliminary announcement of Marcius’ hardihood is introduced with the remark:

Now in those dayes, valliantnes was honoured in Rome above all the other vertues.

Cominius begins his panegyric:

It is held That valour is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver. (II. ii. 87.)

When Marcius drives the Volscians back to Corioli and the Romans hesitate to pursue, we are told:

He dyd encorage his fellowes with wordes and deedes, crying out to them, that fortune had opened the gates of the cittie more for the followers, then for the flyers.

Compare his exhortation:

So, now the gates are ope: now prove good seconds: ’Tis for the followers fortune widens them, Not for the fliers. (I. iv. 43.)

When the proposal to distribute the corn is being discussed, many senators are in favour of it:

But Martius standing up on his feete, dyd somewhat sharpely take up those, who went about to gratifie the people therein, and called them people pleasers and traitours to the nobilitie.

Brutus charges him with this in the play:

When corn was given them gratis, you repined; Scandal’d the suppliants for the people, call’d them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness. (III. i. 43.)

Sometimes the debt is confined to a single phrase or word and yet is unmistakable. When Coriolanus has reached Antium, Plutarch quotes Homer on Ulysses:

So dyd he enter into the enemies towne.

In the play Coriolanus before the house of Aufidius soliloquises:

My love’s upon This enemy town. I’ll enter. (IV. iv. 23.)

Now and then some apparently haphazard detail can be explained if we trace it to its source. Thus, Cominius talks of the “seventeen battles” which the hero had fought since his first exploit. Why seventeen? Doubtless Shakespeare had in his mind the account of the candidature, when Marcius showed the wounds “which he had receyved in seventeene yeres service at the warres, and in many sundrie battells.” In Plutarch the number of years is prescribed by his mythical chronology, for he dates the beginning of Marcius’ career from the wars with the Tarquins, which were supposed to have broken out in 245 A.U.C., while Corioli was taken in 262: but when transferred to the battles it becomes a mere survival which serves at most to give apparent definiteness.

But occasionally such survivals have a higher value. It is instructive, for example, to notice how Shakespeare utilises the tradition dear to Plutarch’s antiquarian tastes but not very interesting to an Elizabethan audience of the acknowledgment made to the goddess, Fortuna Muliebris, after the withdrawal of Coriolanus from Rome.

The Senate ordeined, that the magistrates to gratifie and honour these ladyes, should graunte them all that they would require. And they only requested that they would build a temple of Fortune of the women, for the building whereof they offered them selves to defraye the whole charge of the sacrifices, and other ceremonies belonging to the service of the goddes. Nevertheles, the Senate commending their good will and forwardnes, ordeined, that the temple and image should be made at the common charge of the cittie.

And the marginal note sums up: “The temple of Fortune built for the women.” This seems to be the archaeological ore from which is forged Coriolanus’ gallant hyperbole:

Ladies, you deserve To have a temple built you. (V. ii. 206.)

From the worshippers they become the worshipped.

Sometimes in the survival the fact is transformed to figure, the prose to poetry. After Marcius’ miracles of valour at Corioli, Cominius gives him, “in testimonie that he had wonne that day the price of prowes above all other, a goodly horse with a capparison, and all furniture to him.” This Shakespeare does not omit. Cominius declares:

Caius Marcius Wears this war’s garland: in token of the which My noble steed,[256] known to the camp, I give him With all his trim belonging. (I. ix. 59.)

[256] Shakespeare, following North (“Martius accepted the gift of his horse”) makes it, instead of a horse, Cominius’ own horse, which would be a violation of antique usage. See Büttner as above.

But the same episode furnishes Titus Lartius with his imagery as he points to the wounded and victorious hero:

O general, Here is the steed, we the caparison! (I. ix. 11.)

This illustrates the sort of sea-change that always takes place in the language of North under the hands of the magician, though it may not always be equally perceptible. But it is never entirely lacking, even where we are at first more struck by the amount that Shakespeare has retained without alteration. The Life, for instance, describes what takes place after Marcius has joined Cominius, before they hurry off to the second fight.

Martius asked him howe the order of their enemies battell was, and on which side they had placed their best fighting men. The Consul made him aunswer, that he thought the bandes which were in the voward of their battell, were those of the Antiates, whom they esteemed to be the war-likest men, and which for valliant corage would give no place, to any of the hoste of their enemies. Then prayed Martius to be set directly against them.

Here is what Shakespeare makes of this:

Mar. How lies their battle? Know you on which side They have placed their men of trust? Com. As I guess, Marcius, Their bands in the vaward are the Antiates, Of their best trust; o’er them Aufidius, Their very heart of hope. Mar. I do beseech you, By all the battles wherein we have fought, By the blood we have shed together, by the vows We have made to endure friends, that you directly Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates; And that you not delay the present, but, Filling the air with swords advanced and darts, We prove this very hour. (I. vi. 51.)

Here to begin with Shakespeare hardly does more than change the indirect to the direct narrative and condense a little, but presently he adds picturesqueness, passion, and, by the introduction of Aufidius, dramatic significance. And this is invariably his method. It is unfair to quote the parallel passages without the context, for, apart from the subtle transmutation they have undergone, they are preludes to original utterance and almost every one of them is a starting point rather than the goal. Shakespeare’s normal practice is illustrated in the fable of Menenius, in which, with every allowance made for possible assistance from Camden, the words of his authority or authorities are only so many spur-pricks that set his own imagination at a gallop. And what goes before and comes after is pure Shakespeare.

And it should be noticed that his textual appropriations from North, long or short, obvious or covert, never clash with his more personal contributions, which in bulk are far more important. They are all subdued to the tone that the purpose of the dramatist imposes. Delius says with absolute truth: “This harmonious colouring would make it impossible for us, in respect of style, to discover real or suppositious loans from Plutarch in Shakespeare’s drama, and definitely identify them as such, if by chance North’s translation were inaccessible.” Yet this harmonious colouring, that has its source in the author’s mind and that is required by the theme, does not prevent an individualisation in the utterance, whether wholly original or partly borrowed, that fits it for the lips of the particular speaker. The language, even when it is suggested by North, is not only spontaneous and consistent, it is dramatic as well, and apposite to the strongly marked characters of whom the story is told.

To these characters, and their development by Shakespeare, we now turn. It may be remarked that all of them, except the quite episodical Adrian and Nicanor, are nominally to be found in Plutarch, by whom the hero himself is drawn at full length and in great detail. For his delineation then there was a great deal to borrow and Shakespeare has borrowed a great deal. In his general bearing and in many of his features the Coriolanus of the play is the Coriolanus of the Life, though of course imagined with far more firmness and comprehension. Only on very close scrutiny do we see that each has a physiognomy of his own, and that the difference in the impressions they produce is due not merely to the execution but to the conception. This will become clear as the general discussion proceeds and will incidentally occupy our attention from time to time. Meanwhile it should be noticed that, Coriolanus excepted, Plutarch’s persons are very shadowy and vague. If we compare this biography with those that Shakespeare had used for his earlier Roman plays, it is obvious that it is much more of a monograph. In the others room is found for sketches of many subordinate figures in connection with the titular subject, but Marcius stands out alone and the remaining personages are scarcely more than names. In the tragedy, too, he is in possession of the scene, but his relatives, his friends, and his enemies are also full of interest and life; and for their portraiture Shakespeare had to depend almost entirely on himself.

Next to the hero, for example, it is his mother who is most conspicuous in the play; and how much did Plutarch contribute to the conception of her concrete personality? He supplies only one or two hints, some of which Shakespeare disregards or contradicts. They both attribute to her the sole training of the boy, but Plutarch implies that her discipline was slack and her instruction insufficient, while in Shakespeare she incurs no such blame except in so far as we infer a certain lack of judiciousness from her peculiar attitude to her grandson and from her son’s exaggeration of some of her own traits. But injudiciousness is not quite the same as the laxity that Plutarch’s apologetic paragraph would insinuate:

Caius Martius, whose life we intend now to write, being left an orphan by his father, was brought up under his mother a widowe, who taught us by experience, that orphanage bringeth many discommodities to a childe, but doth not hinder him to become an honest man, and to excell in vertue above the common sorte; as they, are meanely borne, wrongfully doe complayne, that it is the occasion of their casting awaye, for that no man in their youth taketh any care of them to see them well brought up, and taught that were meete. This man is also a good proofe to confirme some mens opinions, that a rare and excellent witte untaught, doth bring forth many good and evill things together; like as a fat soile bringeth forth herbes and weedes, that lieth unmanured.[257] For this Martius naturell wit and great harte dyd marvelously sturre up his corage, to doe and attempt notable actes. But on the other side for lacke of education, he was so chollericke and impacient, that he would yeld to no living creature; which made him churlishe, uncivill, and altogether unfit for any mans conversation.

[257] Unworked, untilled, from manoeuvrer.

Again, in reference to Marcius’ strenuous career, Plutarch writes:

The only thing that made him to love honour, was the joye he sawe his mother dyd take of him. For he thought nothing made him so happie and honorable, as that his mother might heare every bodie praise and commend him, that she might allwayes see him returne with a crowne upon his head, and that she might still embrace him with teares ronning downe her cheekes for joye.

In the play, it is not with tears of joy that Volumnia welcomes her warrior home.

Here is another instance of piety that Plutarch cites:

Martius thinking all due to his mother, that had bene also due to his father if he had lived; dyd not only content him selfe to rejoyce and honour her, but at her desire tooke a wife also, by whom he had two children, and yet never left his mothers house therefore.

In Shakespeare there is no word of Marcius’ marrying at his mother’s desire, and though she apparently lives with him, it is in his, not in her house.

All these notices occur in the first pages of the Life. Thenceforward till her intervention at the close there is only a passing mention of her affliction at her son’s banishment.

When he was come home to his house againe, and had taken his leave of his mother and wife, finding them weeping, and shreeking out for sorrowe, and had also comforted and persuaded them to be content with his chaunce; he immediately went to the gate of the cittie.

Even in regard to the intercession, where Shakespeare follows Plutarch most closely, he makes one significant omission. In the original, it is the suggestion of Valeria “through the inspiration of some god above,” that the women should sue for peace, and she visits Marcius’ kinswoman to secure their help: by the suppression of this circumstance, the prominent place is left to Volumnia. And in the appeal itself Shakespeare, besides the various vivifying and personal touches, makes one important addition. In Plutarch her words are throughout forcible and impassioned, but they do not burst into the wrathful indignation of the close, which alone is sufficient to break down Coriolanus’ resolution.

Now it is clear that the presence of Volumnia does not pervade the Life as it does the play, and she has not nearly so much to do. Moreover, besides being less important, she is less masculine and masterful. Indeed, from Plutarch’s hints it would be possible to construct for her a character that differed widely from that of Shakespeare’s heroine. She is like the latter in her patriotism, her love for and delight in her son, and, at the critical moment, in her influence over him. But even her influence is less constant, and seems to be stronger in the way of unconscious inspiration than of positive direction. It would be quite legitimate to picture her as an essentially womanly woman, high-souled and dutiful, but finding her chosen sphere in the home, overflowing with sympathy and affection, and failing in her obligations as widowed mother only by a lack of sternness.

And if Shakespeare has given features to Volumnia, much more has he done so to Virgilia and young Marcius. Both, of course, are presented in the merest outline, but in Plutarch the wife is only once named and the children are not named at all. Shakespeare’s Virgilia, on the other hand, by the few words she speaks and the few words spoken to her, by her very restraint from speech and the atmosphere in which she moves, produces a very definite as well as a very pleasing impression. Ruskin, after enumerating some other of Shakespeare’s female characters, concludes that they “and last and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity.” This enthusiasm may be, as Ruskin’s enthusiasms sometimes were, exaggerated and misplaced, but it could not be roused by a nonentity; and a nonentity Plutarch’s Virgilia is.

Young Marcius, again, is not merely one of the two children mentioned in the Life. As Mr. Verity remarks,[258] in this case “the half is certainly better than the whole”; and the named half has a wholeness of his own that the anonymous brace can lay no claim to. He is a thorough boy, and an attractive though boisterous one. If he is cruel to winged things, he is brave and circumspect withal. He has a natural objection to be trodden on even for a patriotic cause; if the risk is too great, “he’ll run away till he’s bigger, but then he’ll fight.”

[258] Coriolanus. (The Students’ Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press.) Volumnia indeed refers to “children” in her petition (V. iii. 118), but this seems merely a reminiscence of Plutarch’s language, for everywhere else young Marcius is treated as an only child.

Passing from Coriolanus’ kinsfolk to his friends, we meet with very similar results. Titus Lartius is sketched very slightly in Shakespeare, but a good deal more visually than in Plutarch, who says of him in two sentences that he was “one of the valliantest men the Romaines had at that time,” and that, having entered Corioli with Marcius, he, “when he was gotten out, had some leysure to bring the Romaines with more safetie into the cittie.” Cominius is hardly more distinct. As Consul he conducts the campaign against Corioli; welcomes Marcius from his first exploit, and gives him the opportunity for his second, in the double engagement that then took place; thereafter officially rewards and eulogises his gallantry, which “he commended beyond the moone”; and that is practically all that is said about him. In the play, though in it too his part was a small one, he has characteristics of his own which Shakespeare has created for him without much help from these vague suggestions. Nor has Marcius, in the original story, any intimate association with either of his fellow soldiers. It is stated that at first he is in Lartius’ division of the army, and afterwards joins Cominius and wins his praises, but it is only in the affair of Corioli that their names are mentioned together.

In the drama, however, Menenius is undoubtedly the chief of the young man’s friends as well as one of the most prominent persons; and what has Plutarch to say about him? He is introduced only in connection with the fable which he tells the seceders to the Holy Hill, and, apart from the fable, all that we hear of him is confined to the following few sentences:

The Senate being afeard of their departure, dyd send unto them certaine of the pleasauntest olde men, and the most acceptable to the people among them. Of those, Menenius Agrippa was he, who was sent for chief man of the message from the Senate. He, after many good persuasions and gentle requestes made to the people, on the behalfe of the Senate, knit up his oration in the ende, with a notable tale.... These persuasions pacified the people, conditionally, that the Senate would graunte there should be yerely chosen five magistrates, which they now call Tribuni Plebis.

Even the few particulars given in this passage Shakespeare alters or neglects. It is not to the secessionists on the Mons Sacer, but to a street mob in Rome, that the fable is told. It not merely serves to lubricate in advance the negotiations that result in the tribunate, but effectually discomfits the murmurers, and Menenius learns only subsequently and to his surprise that the Senate has meanwhile conceded the political innovation. There is no hint in Plutarch of his being himself one of the patricians, and if Shakespeare glanced at Holland’s Livy he would see that in point of fact tradition assigned to him a plebeian origin.[259] Above all he has no dealings whatever with Marcius, and, according to Livy, died a year before his banishment. Plutarch thus furnishes hardly anything for the portrait of the man, and nothing at all for his relations with the hero.

[259] Placuit igitur oratorem ad plebem mitti Menenium Agrippam, facundum virum et, quod inde oriundus erat, plebi carum. (II. 32 Weissenborn & Müller’s edition.)

And it is the same, or nearly the same, if we turn from Marcius’ friends to his enemies.

The tribunes, for example, are comparatively colourless. On the institution of the new magistracy,

Junius Brutus, and Sicinius Vellutus were the first tribunes of the people that were chosen, who had only bene the causes and procurers of this sedition.

Then we hear of their opposition to the colonisation of Velitrae because it was infected with the plague, and to a new war with the Volscians, because it was in the interest only of the rich; but they have nothing to do with the rejection of Marcius when he is candidate for the consulship. Only at a later time, when he inveighs against the relief of the people and the tribunitian power, do they stir up a popular tumult and insist that he shall answer their charges, adopting tactics not unlike those that are attributed to them in the play.

All this was spoken to one of these two endes, either that Martius against his nature should be constrained to humble him selfe, and to abase his hawty and fierce minde: or els if he continued still in his stowtnes, he should incurre the peoples displeasure and ill-will so farre, that he should never possibly winne them againe. Which they hoped would rather fall out so, then otherwise; as in deede they gest unhappely, considering Martius nature and disposition.

He answers not only with his wonted boldness, but “gave him selfe in his wordes to thunder and looke therewithall so grimly as though he made no reckoning of the matter.” This affords his opponents their chance:

Whereupon Sicinius, the cruellest and stowtest of the Tribunes, after he had whispered a little with his companions, dyd openly pronounce in the face of all the people, Martius as condemned by the Tribunes to dye.

Matters do not end here. A formal trial is agreed to, at which the resourceful magistrates procure the sentence of banishment, partly by arranging that the votes shall be taken not by centuries but by tribes, so that “the poore needy people” and the rabble may be in the majority, partly by eking out the indictments to which they are pledged to confine themselves, with other accusations. Then they drop out.

It may be observed that Brutus is only once named, and nothing is said of his disposition or ways. Even of Sicinius, who is more conspicuous, we only read that he was “the cruellest and stowtest” of the two. But it is less their character than their policy that occupies Plutarch, and even their policy is presented in an ambiguous light. They are described as the only authors of the rising which culminated in the exodus from the city; but with that exodus Plutarch on the whole seems to sympathise. They are described as “seditious tribunes” when they oppose the colonisation of Velitrae and the renewal of the war; but Plutarch shows they had good grounds for doing so. Even their action against Coriolanus for opposing the grant of corn and advocating the abolition of their office, was from their own point of view, and perhaps from any point of view, perfectly legitimate. We can only say that in the measures they took they were violent and unscrupulous. Yet when we consider the bitterness of party feeling and the exigencies of public life, they seem no worse than many statesmen who have been accounted great. Even their overt policy then is more respectable than that of Shakespeare’s pair of demagogues, and of course it is Shakespeare who has created, or all but created, for them their vulgar but life-like characters.

Nor are things greatly different in the case of the third of Marcius’ enemies, Tullus Aufidius, though Plutarch tells us somewhat more about him, and Shakespeare in the main fills in rather than alters Plutarch’s sketch. The first mention of him occurs when the exile determines on his revenge.

Now in the cittie of Antium, there was one called Tullus Aufidius, who for his riches, as also for his nobilitie and valliantnes, was honoured emong the Volsces as a king. Martius knewe very well that Tullus dyd more malice and envie him, then he dyd all the Romaines besides: bicause that many times in battells where they met, they were ever at the encounter one against another, like lustie coragious youthes, striving in all emulation of honour, and had encountered many times together. In so muche, as besides the common quarrell betweene them, there was bred a marvelous private hate one against another. Yet notwithstanding, considering that Tullus Aufidius was a man of a greate minde, and that he above all other of the Volsces, most desired revenge of the Romaines, for the injuries they had done unto them; he dyd an act that confirmed the true wordes of an auncient Poet, who sayed:

It is a thing full harde, mans anger to withstand.

After the welcome at Antium, Tullus and Coriolanus combine to bring on the war and are entrusted with the joint command; but Tullus chooses to remain at home to defend his country, while Coriolanus conducts the operations abroad, in which he is wonderfully successful. A truce he grants the Romans is however the occasion for a rift in their alliance.

This was the first matter wherewith the Volsces (that most envied Martius glorie and authoritie) dyd charge Martius with. Among those, Tullus was chief: who though he had receyved no private injurie or displeasure of Martius, yet the common faulte and imperfection of mans nature wrought in him, and it grieved him to see his owne reputation bleamished, through Martius great fame and honour, and so him selfe to be lesse esteemed of the Volsces, then he was before.

We do not hear of him after this till Coriolanus has come back from the siege of Rome.

Now when Martius was returned againe into the cittie of Antium from his voyage, Tullus that hated him and could no lenger abide him for the feare he had of his authoritie; sought divers meanes to make him out of the waye, thinking that if he let slippe that present time, he should never recover the like and fit occasion againe.

So he contrives and effects the assassination of his rival.

Thus the chief features of Aufidius’ character and the story of its development, the emulation that is dislodged by generosity, the generosity that is submerged in envy, were already supplied for Shakespeare’s use. But the darker hues are lacking in the earlier picture. There is neither the unscrupulous rancour in his initial relations with Marcius that Shakespeare attributes to them, nor the hypocritical pretence at the close. Plutarch does not bring the contrast with Coriolanus to a head. And in connection with this it should be observed that Tullus appears late and intervenes only incidentally. Less than a sentence is spared to his earlier antagonism with Coriolanus, nor is he present in the march on Rome or during the siege. And this is typical of Plutarch’s treatment of all the subordinate persons. They enter for a moment, and are dismissed. But in Shakespeare they accompany the action throughout, and do this in such a way that they illustrate and influence the character and career of the hero, and have their own characters and careers illustrated and influenced by him. They are all, even young Marcius by description, introduced in the first four scenes, with an indication of their general peculiarities and functions, and with the single exception of Titus Lartius, they continue to reappear almost to the end.

The recurrent presence of the agents of itself involves considerable modification in the conduct of the plot, but in this respect too we are at first more struck by the resemblances than the differences between the two versions; and it is possible to exhibit the story in such a manner that its main lines seem the same in both.

The setting is furnished by the primitive Roman state when it has newly assumed its republican form. Less than a score of years before, it passed through its first great crisis in its successful rejection of the kingship, and ever since has been engaged in a life-and-death struggle with representatives of the exiled dynasty and with jealous neighbours somewhat similar in power and character to itself. It has made good its position under the direction of a proud and valiant aristocracy, but not without paying the price. The constant wars have resulted in widespread poverty and distress among the lower classes till they can bear it no longer and demand constitutional changes by which, as they think, their misery may be redressed. Rome is thus confronted with the internal peril of revolution as well as the foreign peril of invasion, and the future mistress of the world runs the risk of being cut off at the outset of her career by tribal broils and domestic quarrels. It is this that gives the legend a certain grandeur of import. The Senate, finding itself and its partisans in the minority, concedes to the commons rights which have the effect of weakening its old authority, and for that reason are bitterly resented by upholders of the old order. Meanwhile, however, Rome is able to take the field against the Volscians and gains a decisive victory over them, mainly owing to the soldiership of the young patrician, Marcius, who wins for himself in the campaign the name of Coriolanus. The ability he has shown, the glory he has achieved, the gratitude that is his due, seem to mark him out for a leading role. He almost deserves, and almost attains, the highest dignity the little state has to confer: but he has already given proof of his scorn for popular demands and opposition to the recent innovations, and at the last moment he is set aside. Not only that, but the new magistrates, in dread of his influence, incite the people against him and procure his condemnation to death, which, however, is afterwards mitigated to banishment. His friends of the nobility dare not or cannot interpose, and he departs into exile. Then his civic virtue breaks beneath the strain, and, reconciling himself with the Volscians, he leads them against his country. Nothing can stay his advance, and he is on the point of reducing the city, when, yielding to filial affection what he had refused to patriotic obligation, he relinquishes his revenge when he has it within his grasp. But this gives a pretext to those among his new allies who envy his greatness, and soon afterwards he is treacherously slain.

This general scheme is common to the biography and the play, and many of the details, whether presented or recounted, are derived from the former by the latter. Such, in addition to those already mentioned in another connection, are Marcius’ first exploit in the battle with Tarquin, when he bestrides a citizen, avenges his injury, and is crowned with the garland of oak; the dispersion of the soldiers to take spoil in Corioli, and Marcius’ consequent indignation; the response to his call for volunteers; his petition on behalf of his former host; the initial approval of his candidature by the plebs from a feeling of shame; the custom of candidates wearing the humble gown and showing their old wounds at an election; the popular joy at his banishment; the muster of nobles to see him to the gates; his popularity with the Volscian soldiery and their eagerness to serve under him; the perturbation and mutual recriminations in Rome at his approach; his reception of former friends when they petition him for mercy; the device of interrupting his speech in Antium lest his words should secure his acquittal.

To this extent Shakespeare and Plutarch agree, and the agreement is important and far-reaching. Has the dramatist, then, been content to embellish and supplement the diction of the story, and give new life to the characters, while leaving the fable unchanged except in so far as these other modifications may indirectly affect it? On the contrary we shall see that the design is thoroughly recast, that each of the borrowed details receives a new interpretation or a heightened colouring, that significant insertions and no less significant omissions concur to alter the effect of the whole.

Sometimes Shakespeare’s innovations followed almost necessarily and without any remoter result from the greater fullness and concreteness of his picture, and the care with which he grouped the persons round his hero. Such are many of the conversations and subordinate scenes, by means of which the story is conveyed to us in all its reality and movement; the episode of Valeria’s call, the description and words of Marcius’ little son, Aufidius’ self-disclosure to his soldiers and his lieutenant, even the interview between the Volscian scout and the Roman informer.

Still in this class, but more important, are the inventions that have no authority in Plutarch, but that are not opposed to and may even have been suggested by some of his hints. Thus in the Life, Volumnia’s interposition is not required to make Marcius submit himself to the judgment of the people, and in this connection she is not mentioned at all; but at any rate her action in Shakespeare does not belie the influence that Plutarch ascribes to her.

Occasionally, again, the deviation from and observance of the biographer’s statements follow each other so fast, and are both so dominated by truth to his spirit, that it needs some vigilance to note all the points where the routes diverge or coincide. Take, for example, the account of the candidature:

Shortely after this, Martius stoode for the Consulshippe; and the common people favored his sute, thinking it would be a shame to denie, and refuse, the chiefest noble man of bloude, and most worthie persone of Rome, and specially him that had done so great service and good to the common wealth. For the custome of Rome was at that time, that such as dyd sue for any office, should for certen dayes before be in the market place, only with a poore gowne on their backes, and without any coate underneath, to praye the cittizens to remember them at the daye of election: which was thus devised, either to move the people the more, by requesting them in suche meane apparell, or els bicause they might shewe them their woundes they had gotten in the warres in the service of the common wealth, as manifest markes and testimonie of their valliantnes.... Now Martius following this custome, shewed many woundes and cuttes upon his bodie, which he had receyved in seventeene yeres service at the warres, and in many sundrie battells, being ever the formest man that dyd set out feete to fight. So that there was not a man emong the people, but was ashamed of him selfe, to refuse so valliant a man: and one of them sayed to another, “We must needes chuse him Consul, there is no remedie.” But when the daye of election was come, and that Martius came to the market place with great pompe, accompanied with all the Senate, and the whole Nobilitie of the cittie about him, who sought to make him Consul, with the greatest instance and intreatie they could, or ever attempted for any man or matter: then the love and good will of the common people, turned straight to an hate and envie toward him, fearing to put this office of soveraine authoritie into his handes, being a man somewhat partiall toward the nobilitie, and of great credit and authoritie amongest the Patricians, and as one they might doubt would take away alltogether the libertie from the people.

Now Shakespeare borrows from Plutarch the explanation of the rather remarkable circumstance that the people at first gave Martius their support, and, like Plutarch, he emphasises it by giving it twice over, though he avoids the dullness of repetition by making one of the statements serious and one humorous. The first is put in the mouth of the official of the Capitol:

He hath so planted his honours in their eyes, and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent, and not confess so much, were a kind of ingrateful injury: to report otherwise, were a malice, that giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it. (II. ii. 32.)

The second is given in the language of the plebeians themselves:

First Citizen. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him. Second Citizen. We may, sir, if we will. Third Citizen. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do: for if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude: of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members. (II. iii. 1.)

But this is only before he wears the candidate’s gown, for, otherwise than in Plutarch, he does not show his wounds—“No man saw them,” say the citizens (III. iii. 173)—and gives such offence by his contumacy that it is on this the tribunes are able to take further action. In the biography he is rejected only because the indiscreet advocacy of the nobles makes the plebeians fear that he will be too much of a partizan. He shows no reluctance either to stand or to comply with the conditions. All these things are the inventions of Shakespeare, and are made to bring about the catastrophe which in his authority was due to very different causes. Nevertheless, they are suggested by Plutarch in so far as they are merely additional illustrations of that excess of aristocratic pride, on which Plutarch, too, insists as the source of Marcius’ offences and misfortunes.

But this example merges into another kind of alteration which may primarily have been due to the need of greater economy and dramatic condensation, but which in its results involves a great deal more. In Plutarch, Coriolanus’ unsuccessful candidature has, except as it adds to his private irritation, no immediate result; and only some time later does his banishment follow on quite another occasion. Corn had come from Sicily, and in the dearth it was proposed to distribute it gratis: but Marcius inveighed against such a course and urged that the time was opportune for the abolition of the Tribunate, in a speech which, in the play, he “speaks again” when his election is challenged. But the Life reports it only as delivered in the Senate; and the tribunes, who are present, at once leave and raise a tumult, attempt to arrest him and are resisted. The senators, to allay the commotion, resolve to sell the corn cheap, and thus end the discontent against themselves, but the tribunes persist in their attack on the ringleader, hoping, as we have seen, that he will prove refractory and give a handle against himself. When he does this and the death-sentence is pronounced, there is still so much feeling of fairness that a legal trial is demanded, which the tribunes consent to grant him, and to which he consents to submit on the stipulation that he shall be charged only on the one count of aspiring to make himself king. But when the assembly is held the tribunes break their promise and accuse him of seeking to withhold the corn and abolish the Tribunate, and of distributing the spoils of the Antiates only among his own followers. For shortly after the fall of Corioli, the people had refused to march against the Volsces, and Coriolanus, organising a private expedition, had won a victory, taken great booty, and given it to all those who had been of the party. So the unexpectedness and injustice of this last indictment throws him out.

This matter was most straunge of all to Martius, looking least to have been burdened with that, as with any matter of offence. Whereupon being burdened on the sodaine, and having no ready excuse to make even at that instant: he beganne to fall a praising of the souldiers that had served with him in that jorney. But those that were not with him, being the greater number, cried out so lowde, and made such a noyse, that he could not be heard. To conclude, when they came to tell the voyces of the Tribes, there were three voyces odde, which condemned him to be banished for life.

Now there are several things to notice in Shakespeare’s very different version. The first is the tact with which he compresses a great many remotely connected incidents into one. He antedates the affair about the corn with Marcius’ speech against the distribution and the Tribunate, and only brings it in as a supplementary circumstance in the prosecution. The real centre of the situation is Coriolanus’ behaviour when a candidate, and round this all else is grouped: and this behaviour, it will be remembered, is altogether a fabrication on Shakespeare’s part. Two other things follow from this.

In the first place, the unreasonableness of the Romans as a whole is considerably mitigated. More prominence, indeed, is given to the machinations of the tribunes, but on the other hand the body of electors is not only acting less on its own initiative than on the prompting of its guides, but it proceeds quite properly to avenge grievances that do exist and avert dangers that do threaten. And this excuse is to some extent valid for the leaders too. In Plutarch, the Senate has come to terms on the question of the corn, yet Coriolanus is hounded down for an opposition which has turned out to be futile. In the play, though he has met with a check, both he and his friends hope that even now he may win the election, and the evils that would result to the people from his consulship are still to be feared.

Again, Plutarch dwells on the unfairness of the arrangements for taking the votes, which has the effect of packing the jury:

And first of all the Tribunes would in any case (whatsoever became of it) that the people would proceede to geve their voyces by Tribes, and not by hundreds: for by this meanes the multitude of the poore needy people (and all such rabble as had nothing to lose, and had lesse regard of honestie before their eyes) came to be of greater force (bicause their voyces were numbered by the polle) then the noble honest cittizens: whose persones and purse dyd duetifully serve the common wealth in their warres.

This is not exactly omitted in the drama, but it is slurred over, and Plutarch’s clear explanation is entirely suppressed, so that few of Shakespeare’s readers and still fewer of his hearers could possibly suspect the significance.

Sicinius. Have you a catalogue Of all the voices that we have procured Set down by the poll? Ædile. I have; ’tis ready. Sicinius. Have you collected them by tribes? Ædile. I have. (III. iii. 8.)

Above all, the accusations brought against Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, are substantially just. He may not seek to wind himself into a power tyrannical, if we take tyrant, as Plutarch certainly did but as Shakespeare probably did not, in the strict classical sense of tyrannus, but with his disregard of aged custom and his avowed opinions of the people, there can be no doubt that he would have wielded the consular powers tyrannically, in the ordinary acceptation of the word. For there can be as little doubt about his ill-will to the masses and his abhorrence of the tribunitian system. And it is on these grounds that he is condemned. It is very noticeable that the division of the Antiate spoil, which in Plutarch is the most decisive and unwarrantable allegation against him, is mentioned by Shakespeare only in advance as a subordinate point that may be brought forward, but, as a matter of fact, it is never urged.

Brutus. In this point charge him home, that he affects Tyrannical power: if he evade us there, Enforce him with his envy to the people, And that the spoil got on the Antiates Was ne’er distributed. (III. iii. 1.)

Shakespeare makes no further use of a circumstance to which Plutarch attaches so great importance that he dwells on it twice over and gives it the prominent place in the narrative of the trial. This piece of sharp practice becomes quite negligible in the play, and the only chicanery of which the tribunes are guilty in the whole transaction is that, as in the Life, but more explicitly, they goad Coriolanus to a fit of rage in which he avows his real sentiments—a tactical expedient that many politicians would consider perfectly permissible. Shakespeare, as has often been pointed out, in some ways shows even less appreciation than Plutarch of the merits of the people; so it is all the more significant that, at the crisis of the play, he softens down and obliterates the worst traits in their proceedings against their enemy.

And the second thing we observe is that by all this Shakespeare emphasises the insolence and truculence of the hero. It is Coriolanus’ pride that turns his candidature, which begins under the happiest auspices, to a snare. It is still his pride that plays into the tribunes’ hands and makes him repeat in mere defiance his offensive speech. It is again his pride, not any calumny about his misapplying the profits of his raid, that gives the signal for the adverse sentence. Just as in this respect the plebs is represented as on the whole less ignoble than Plutarch makes it, so Coriolanus’ conduct is portrayed as more insensate.

And this two-fold tendency, to palliate the guilt of Rome and to stress the violence that provoked it, appears in the more conspicuous of Shakespeare’s subsequent deviations from his authority.

In Plutarch, Tullus and Aufidius have great difficulty in persuading the magnates of Antium to renew the war, and only succeed when the Romans expel the Volscian residents from their midst.

On a holy daye common playes being kept in Rome, apon some suspition, or false reporte, they made proclamation by sound of trumpet, that all the Volsces should avoyde out of Rome before sunne set. Some thincke this was a crafte and deceipt of Martius, who sent one to Rome to the Consuls, to accuse the Volsces falsely, advertising them howe they had made a conspiracie to set upon them, whilest they were busie in seeing these games, and also to sette their cittie a fyre.

At any rate, the proclamation brings about a declaration of hostilities, and war speedily follows.

Now in Shakespeare, Lartius, for fear of attack, has to surrender Corioli even before Coriolanus meets with his rebuff.

Coriolanus. Tullus Aufidius then had made new head? Lartius. He had, my lord, and that it was which caused Our swifter composition. (III. i. 1.)

Moreover, all the preparations of the Volsces are complete for a new incursion. Cominius, indeed, cannot believe that they will again tempt fortune so soon.

They are worn, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again. (III. i. 6.)

But Cominius is wrong. In the little intercalated scene between the Roman and the Volsce, we learn that they have mustered an army which the latter thus describes:

A most royal one; the centurions and their charges, distinctly billeted, already in the entertainment, and to be on foot at an hour’s warning. (IV. iii. 47.)

And Aufidius welcomes Coriolanus to the feast with the words:

O, come, go in, And take our friendly senators by the hands: Who now are here, taking their leaves of me, Who am prepared against your territories, Though not for Rome itself. (IV. v. 137.)

The arrival of such an auxiliary, however, at once alters that plan, and we presently learn that they are now going to make direct for the city:

To-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall have the drum struck up this afternoon: ’tis, as it were, a parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips. (IV. v. 229.)

Now in Plutarch we cannot but be struck by the pusillanimous part the Romans play when menaced by their great peril. They answer the declaration of war with a bravado which events quite fail to justify, but, despite the warning they have received, they make no resistance and do not even prepare for it. In Shakespeare there is more excuse for them. They are taken completely by surprise. Their foe has almost been their match before, when they were equipped to meet him, and had their champion on their side. Now that champion is not only gone, but is at the head of the invading army.

Nor is this all. In Plutarch, Coriolanus begins operations by making a raid on the Roman territories with light-armed troops, retiring again with his plunder. Still the Romans do not take any precautions. In a second campaign he gets within five miles of the city, and still they do nothing but send an embassage. Even when, at the peril of his popularity, he grants them a truce of thirty days, they make no use of it for defence, but only continue to transmit arrogant or abject messages. This further opportunity, too, which they so strangely neglect, is wisely omitted by Shakespeare. With him the irruption is swift and sudden beyond the grasp of human thought. Coriolanus breaks across the border and strikes straight for Rome. There is no time for defensive measures, no possibility of aid. Even so, the part the Romans play is not so heroic as might be expected, but it is at least intelligible and much less dastardly than in the history.

Or take another instance. In describing the first inroad of Coriolanus, Plutarch writes:

His chiefest purpose was, to increase still the malice and dissention betweene the nobilitie, and the communaltie: and to drawe that on, he was very carefull to keepe the noble mens landes and goods safe from harme and burning, but spoyled all the whole countrie besides, and would suffer no man to take or hurte any thing of the noble mens. This made greater sturre and broyle betweene the nobilitie and people, then was before. For the noble men fell out with the people, bicause they had so unjustly banished a man of so great valure and power. The people on thother side, accused the nobilitie, how they had procured Martius to make these warres, to be revenged of them: bicause it pleased them to see their goodes burnt and spoyled before their eyes, whilest them selves were well at ease, and dyd behold the peoples losses and misfortunes, and knowing their owne goods safe and out of daunger: and howe the warre was not made against the noble men, that had the enemie abroad, to keepe that they had in safety.

In Shakespeare there is no word of Coriolanus making any such distinction either from policy or partisanship: he is incensed against all the inhabitants of Rome, “the dastard nobles” quite as much as the offending plebeians. And, on the other hand, though the patricians revile the populace and its leaders, there is no division between the orders, and they show no inclination to disregard the solidarity of their interests. This contrast becomes more marked in the sequel. According to Plutarch, the people in panic desire to recall the exile; but the

Senate assembled upon it, would in no case yeld to that. Who either dyd it of a selfe will to be contrarie to the peoples desire: or bicause Martius should not returne through the grace and favour of the people.

Afterwards, however, when he encamps so near Rome, the majority has its way:

For there was no Consul, Senatour, nor Magistrate, that durst once contrarie the opinion of the people, for the calling home againe of Martius.

Accordingly, the first envoys are instructed to announce to him his re-instatement in all his rights.

In Shakespeare’s account the action of Rome becomes much more dignified. In none of the negociations, in no chance word of citizen, tribune or senator, is there any hint of the sentence on Coriolanus being revoked. Only when peace is concluded does his recall follow quite naturally, as an act of gratitude, in the burst of jubilant relief:

Unshout the shout that banish’d Marcius, Repeal him with the welcome of his mother. (V. v. 4.)

This, too, is one of the indications of Shakespeare’s feeling for Roman greatness, that we should bear in mind when elsewhere he seems to show less sense even than Plutarch of her civic virtue.

The last notable deviation of the play from the biography occurs in the passage which deals with the murder of Coriolanus, and the difference is such as to make the victim far more responsible for the crime.

In Plutarch, after his return to Antium, Tullus, wishing to make away with him, demands that he should be deposed from his authority and taken to task. Marcius replies that he is willing to resign, if this be required by all the lords, and also to give account to the people if they will hear him. Thereupon a common council is called, at which proceedings begin by certain orators inciting popular feeling against him.

When they had tolde their tales, Martius rose up to make them aunswer. Now, notwithstanding the mutinous people made a marvelous great noyse, yet when they sawe him, for the reverence they bare unto his valliantnes, they quieted them selves, and gave still audience to alledge with leysure what he could for his purgation. Moreover, the honestest men of the Antiates, and who most rejoyced in peace, shewed by their countenaunce that they would heare him willingly, and judge also according to their conscience. Whereupon Tullus fearing that if he dyd let him speake, he would prove his innocencie to the people, bicause emongest other things he had an eloquent tongue, besides that the first good service he had done to the people of the Volsces, dyd winne him more favour, then these last accusations could purchase him displeasure: and furthermore, the offence they layed to his charge, was a testimonie of the good will they ought him, for they would never have thought he had done them wrong for that they tooke not the cittie of Rome, if they had not bene very neare taking of it, by meanes of his approche and conduction. For these causes Tullus thought he might no lenger delaye his pretence and enterprise, neither to tarie for the mutining and rising of the common people against him: wherefore those that were of the conspiracie, beganne to crie out that he was not to be heard, nor that they would not suffer a traytour to usurpe tyrannicall power over the tribe of the Volsces, who would not yeld up his estate and authoritie. And in saying these wordes, they all fell upon him, and killed him in the market place, none of the people once offering to rescue him. Howbeit it is a clear case, that this murder was not generally consented unto, of the most parte of the Volsces: for men came out of all partes to honour his bodie, and dyd honorablie burie him, setting out his tombe with great store of armour and spoyles, as the tombe of a worthie persone and great captaine.

Here the conspirators do not give him a chance, but kill him before a word passes his lips. In the tragedy, on the contrary, all might have been well, if in his rage of offended pride at Tullus’ insults and taunts, he had not been carried away with his vaunts and reminders to excite and excuse the passions of his hearers. And thus with Shakespeare his ungovernable insolence is now made the cause of his death, just as before it has been accentuated as the cause of his banishment.

Still, though the exasperation against Coriolanus in Rome as in Corioli is thus in a measure justified, his own violence also receives its apology. In the latter case it is the provocation of Aufidius that rouses him to frenzy. In the former, it is the ineptitude of the citizens that fills him with scorn for their claims. And it is with reference to this and his whole conception of the Roman plebs that Shakespeare has made the most momentous and remarkable change in his story, the consideration of which we have purposely left to the last. The discussion of the difference in Plutarch’s and in Shakespeare’s attitude to the people will show us some of the most important aspects of the play.

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