William
Shakespeare
Three Roman
Plays:
Julius Caesar
Coriolanus
Penguin
Classics, Paperback [1995].
12mo. 652 pp. Introductions and Notes to all plays by the
editors.
Julius Caesar edited by Norman Sanders.
Antony and
Cleopatra edited by Emrys Jones.
Coriolanus
edited by G. R. Hibbard.
First published separately in the New Penguin Shakespeare, 1967-77.
First collected thus, 1995.
Contents
Julius Caesar
Introduction
Further Reading
An Account of the Text
Julius Caesar
Act I, Scenes 1-3
Act I, Scenes 1-3
Act II, Scenes 1-4
Act III, Scenes 1-3
Act IV, Scenes 1-3
Act V, Scenes 1-5
Introduction
Further Reading
An Account of the Text
Act I, Scenes 1-5
Act II, Scenes 1-7
Act III, Scenes 1-13
Act IV, Scenes 1-15
Act V, Scenes 1-2
Coriolanus
Introduction
Further Reading
The Language of the Play
An Account of the Text
Coriolanus
Act I, Scenes 1-10
Act I, Scenes 1-10
Act II, Scenes 1-3
Act III, Scenes 1-3
Act IV, Scenes 1-7
Act V, Scenes 1-6
==============================================================
It makes a
lot of sense to collect these three plays in one volume. Nobody to my knowledge
has summarised the matter better than Harold Goddard:
Antony and Cleopatra may be taken not only by itself, but as the final part of Shakespeare’s Roman trilogy – Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra – last not in order of composition but in historical sequence. Coriolanus, Brutus,
Considered
as three related Tragedies or even as a tragic trilogy, there are notes of
triumph and even of hope to redeem the suffering at the end of each play and at
the end of the whole. But considered as a single history or as the story of the
evolution of imperialism, there is little but disillusionment and a sense of
predestined tendency of freedom, when it has once been wrested from slavery, to
return again to slavery as in a perpetual circle.
Can
anyone doubt for a moment whether Shakespeare considered the tragic-poetical or
the historical-political the profounder way of regarding life? Certainly the
last thing Shakespeare was offering us at the end of his trilogy was any
doctrine of “all for love” in the cheap popular scene of this phrase as
suggested by the title of Dryden’s famous version of the story of Antony Antony Antony
Spoilers ahead!
=====================================================================
The Characters in the Play
Mark Antony, Octavius Caesar, Lepidus: triumvirs
Demetrius, Philo, Domitius Enobarbus, Ventidius, Silius,
Eros, Canidius, Scarus, Decretas: Antony
Maecenas, Agrippa, Taurus, Dolabella, Thidias, Gallus,
Proculeius: Caesar’s friends and followers
Sextus Pompei
Menecrates, Menas, Varrius: Pompei’s friends
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Charmian, Iras, Alexas, Mardian, Diomedes, Seleucus:
Cleopatra's attendants
Octavia, Caesar’s sister
Messengers, A Soothsayer, Attendants, Servants, Soldiers,
A Boy, A Schoolmaster (Antony
Cleopatra’s ladies, eunuchs, servants, soldiers,
captains, officers
--------------------------------------------------------------
In addition
to being one of Shakespeare’s least popular plays with readers and
theatergoers, Antony and Cleopatra
has gathered some curiously mixed responses from Shakespearean authorities. Hazlitt
called it a “very noble play” but immediately went on to exclude it from “the
first class of Shakespeare’s productions”.[2]
Dr Johnson, amazingly even for so insensitive a Shakespearean as himself,
declared that “no character is very strongly discriminated”; at least he had
the decency to exclude “the feminine arts, some of which are too low”.[3]
G. B. Harrison, my favourite Shakespearean scholar, takes the palm for most
ambiguous attitude. He opens his essay on the play thus:
Antony and Cleopatra
is the most magnificent of all Shakespeare’s plays. The verse is gorgeous, the
characterization subtle, and the construction elaborate.
He continues
to observe that, unlike the other two Roman plays in which Shakespeare tries to
“preserve a suitable classical decorum”, in Antony
and Cleopatra “he is at his freest, writing with delight, understanding and
gusto and with a new command of words, rhythms and imagery.” Furthermore, and
more provocatively, while in the language of Lear and Macbeth there is
a “suggestion of deliberate, conscious experiment, especially in the use of a
more elaborate and pregnant kind of imagery”, in Antony and Cleopatra “the new technique has become instinctive.” But
he ends the essay thus:
Antony and Cleopatra
is not deep tragedy but rather a comment on history. […] To read or to watch –
if the producer can overcome the difficulty of presenting a play so essentially
Elizabethan to a modern audience – Antony
and Cleopatra is gorgeous, with the
loveliest word-music, but it never reaches down to the depths of emotion. The
reason is clear. The story is not by any standard essentially tragic, for a man
who throws his wealth into the lap of a harlot and then kills himself is no
tragic hero; his death is not heroic, but the final degradation.
Nevertheless,
though not a deep tragedy, and indeed Shakespeare never intended it to be, Antony and Cleopatra is not a failure,
but a triumph, a thing of beauty incomparable.[4]
Mr Harrison’s
criteria are quite exalted – only two of Shakespeare’s plays, Lear and Othello, does he consider to be “deep tragedies” – so we, the
common mortals, are perhaps allowed to disagree with his opinions. Personally,
I think he misses the point with breathtaking completeness. Using his own
criteria, one might say with equal justice that an old man’s folly and the
death of his youngest but most arrogant daughter or the demise of a dumb
military man and his nagging wife does not constitute anything like “deep
tragedy”, either.
Another
foolish injustice is the favourite tool of the critics: comparisons. In his Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909)[5],
the venerable A. C. Bradley famously disagreed with Coleridge and argued that Antony and Cleopatra is not on par with
the Big Four. This is missing the point in the grand manner. Never could
Bradley comprehend that generalizations and categorizations lead nowhere as far
as Shakespeare is concerned. The Bard’s too big for that. Comedy, tragedy and
history are so effortlessly merged in Antony
and Cleopatra that trying to separate them is futile.
Coleridge[6],
the arch-Bardolater, and Goddard[7],
his faithful disciple in the twentieth century, belong to the minority who
consider Antony and Cleopatra a truly
great play. No reservations. I tend to belong to this party. The first reading
is bound to be baffling. Forty-two scenes and just about as many speaking
parts, altogether amounting to 3028 lines, is no joke. But the play rewards
careful study. You might be surprised how much it grows on you, at any rate it
has grown a great deal on me.
One minor
drawback is that the play requires a good deal of historical background. If you
are relatively well-familiar with Roman history from the end of the first
century BC, you will immediately know, for example, why Octavius feels
threatened by Pompey and why he can’t defeat him alone but has to seek Antony
The other
side of the historical equation is North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, Shakespeare’s main source for all
of his “Roman plays”. Now, you don’t have to know The Life of Marcus Antonius in order to enjoy the play to the full.
But if you do, your appreciation of Shakespeare’s genius will be greatly
increased. As C. T. Winchester has noted, “in no one of Shakespeare’s plays
does he keep so close to his original.” He even asserts that the play “might
almost be called a poetic paraphrase” of Plutarch.[9]
There are very good reasons for that. The complete plot, from earth-shaking
events to minor incidents, comes straight from Plutarch. So do quite a few
words and phrases. And yet, how original and how marvellous is Shakespeare’s
transformation of Plutarch’s verbose original. The most famous example is, of
course, Enobarbus’ description of Cleopatra’s first meeting with Antony
[Plutarch:]
Therefore
when she was sent unto by divers letters, lumpful both from Antonius himself,
and also from his friends, she made so light of it and mocked Antonius so much,
that she disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the river
of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of
silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes,
hautboys, citherns, viols, and such other instruments as they played upon in
the barge. And now for the person of herself: she was laid under a pavilion of
cloth off gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus commonly
drawn in picture: and hard by her, on either and of her, pretty fair boys
apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands,
with the which they fanned wind upon her. Her Ladies and gentlewomen also, the
fairest of them were apparelled like the nymphs Nereides (which are the
mermaids of the waters) and like the Graces, some steering the helm, others
tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came a
wonderful passing sweet savour of perfumes, that perfumed the wharf’s side,
pestered with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge
all alongst the river’s side: others also ran out of the city to see her coming
in. So that in th’ end, there ran such multitudes of people one after another
to see her, that Antonius was left post alone in the market place in his
lmperial seat to give audience: and there went a rumour in the people’s mouths,
that the goddess Venus was come to play with the god Bacchus, for the general
good of all Asia.[10]
[Shakespeare,
II.2.195-223:]
The
barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned
on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple
the sails, and so perfumèd that
The
winds were lovesick with them; The oars were silver,
Which
to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The
water which they beat to follow faster,
As
amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It
beggared all description. She did lie
In
her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing
that Venus where we see
The
fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood
pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids,
With
divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To
glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And
what they undid did.
[…]
Her
gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So
many mermaids, tended her i’th’eyes,
And
made their bends adornings. At the helm
A
seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle
Swell
with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That
yarely frame the office. From the barge
A
strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of
the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her
people out upon her; and Antony
Enthroned
i’th’market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling
to th’air; which, but for vacancy,
Had
gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And
made a gap in nature.
Apart from
turning the turgid prose into musical verse (no mean achievement in itself),
Shakespeare’s touches are few and subtle, but of great importance.[11]
Note that he makes the winds “love-sick” and the water “amorous”, thus
suggesting Cleopatra’s powerful sensuality. This alluring image is greatly intensified
and made far more evocative than it is in Plutarch. The barge is not just “in
the river of Cydnus Antony
Such examples
are countless. In his copious footnotes, Emrys Jones gives a number of
quotations from Plutarch and the reader has many opportunities to see how
Shakespeare arranged, condensed, heightened and transformed his pedestrian
prose into glorious verse. The method is very much the same as that of Franz
Liszt who often took the music of others, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti and even
Mozart for example, and then created
– I use this verb deliberately! – a new composition of startling originality. I
know of few better illustrations of sheer genius. Those who still hold
Shakespeare’s stealing of plots against him are like the fellows who go to the Louvre to see Mona Lisa and nothing else.
Reading the
play for the first time, the thing that immediately impresses me is the immense
richness. The variety of scenes is dazzling. Political intrigue in Rome (II.2.),
a drunken party on Pompey’s galley (II.7., and what a fine satire of our
betters it is!), off-stage battles all around the Mediterranean (III.7-10. at
Actium; IV.6-8 around Alexandria
The opening
of the play shows how grandiloquence can be put to a fine dramatic use. In
exactly ten lines, you get a vivid impression of Antony
PHILO
Nay,
but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows
the measure. Those his goodly eyes,
That
o’er the files and musters of the war
Have
glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The
office and devotion of their view
Upon
a tawny front. His captain’s heart,
Which
in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The
buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And
is become the bellows and the fan
To
cool a gypsy’s lust.
When politics
are discussed, the verse mutates completely. It becomes blunt and matter-of-fact.
My favourite example is Pompey’s perceptive explanation – in exactly 16 words!
– why Lepidus is by far the least important of the triumvirs (II.1.14-15):
POMPEY
Lepidus flatters
both,
Of
both is flattered; but he neither loves,
Nor
either cares for him.
When it comes
to elaborate imagery, Shakespeare is unsurpassed. Consider Antony ’s
reply to Cleopatra when, after his ignominious flight at Actium ,
she tells him she didn’t know he would follow her. He beautifully evokes the
marine nature of the accident and then expands it further (III.11.56-61):
My
heart was to thy rudder tied by th’strings,
And
thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit
Thy
full supremacy thou knewest, and that
Thy
beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command
me.
Some of the
most affecting passages are notable for the opposite. For my money, Antony
Eros,
thou yet behold’st me?
EROS
Ay, noble lord.
Sometimes
we see a cloud that’s dragonish;
A
vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A
towered citadel, a pendent rock,
A
forkèd mountain, or blue promontory
With
trees upon’t that nod unto the world,
And
mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;
They
are black vesper’s pageants.
EROS
Ay, my lord,
That
which is now a horse, even with a thought
The
rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,
As
water is in water.
EROS
It does,
my lord.
My
good knave Eros, now thy captain is
Even
such a body. Here I am Antony
Yet
cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
I
made these wars for Egypt
Whose
heart I thought I had, for she had mine;
Which,
whilst it was mine, had annexed unto’t
A
million more, now lost – she, Eros, has
Packed
cards with Caesar, and false-played my glory
Unto
an enemy's triumph.
Nay,
weep not, gentle Eros, there is left us
Ourselves
to end ourselves.
But all this
is by the way!
What makes
this a great play is the one thing that always does, no matter the defects, the
one thing without which the most exciting plot and the most sublime poetry are
worthless. Great characters. Tony and Cleo are real, alive, fascinating, compelling.
Deeply flawed, of course, but aren’t we all? Terribly irritating now and then,
but aren’t most of us so? How historically accurate they are is, of course, irrelevant.
(Fact and fiction are so inextricably mingled that we’ll never know just how
close Tony and Cleo are to the “real” Antony
Shakespeare’s
Cleopatra is a mind-boggling creature of baffling complexity. She is vain, coy,
jealous, hysterical, mysterious, fickle, vindictive and charming. Above all,
she is manipulative. She doesn’t seem to be terribly smart. However intelligent
the historical Cleopatra may have been, Shakespeare’s Cleo is a dumb doll. She
is neither politically nor socially astute. She is even more incompetent in
military affairs. Her only talent is to seduce and manipulate men. But it’s a
talent that amounts to genius.
CLEOPATRA
[I.3.2-13:]
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. Quick, and return.
CHARMIAN
Madam,
methinks, if you did love him dearly,
You
do not hold the method to enforce
The
like from him.
CLEOPATRA
What should I do,
I do not?
CHARMIAN
In
each thing give him way. Cross him nothing.
CLEOPATRA
Thou
teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.
CHARMIAN
Tempt
him not so too far. I wish, forbear.
In
time we hate that which we often fear.
But
here comes Antony
The
irony – one of the many ironies in this play – is that once and only once did
Cleo listen to Charmian’s advice, and it proved fatal (IV.13.):
CLEOPATRA
Help
me, my women! O, he’s more mad
Than
Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly
Was
never so embossed.
CHARMIAN
To
th’monument!
There
lock yourself, and send him word you are dead.
The
soul and body rive not more in parting
Than
greatness going off.
CLEOPATRA
To
th’monument!
Mardian,
go tell him I have slain myself;
Say,
that the last I spoke was ‘Antony
And
word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,
And
bring me how he takes my death to the monument!
Why
should you care about Cleopatra at all? Well, for one thing, the character is
drawn with consummate skill and great verisimilitude; likeable she is not, but
alive – oh yes! For another, in the final scene she is miraculously transformed
from shallow to sublime. The amazing thing is that her character loses nothing
of its vividness and coherence in the process. It takes a Shakespeare to do
that. The superb final scene has been lavishly praised by the critics and
wilfully misunderstood by the readers. It is common among the latter to
suggest that Cleopatra kills herself only because she knows she can’t seduce
Octavius and fears the humiliation of a Roman triumph. This, of course, is
nonsense. Harold Goddard has brilliantly argued the matter and concluded, to my
mind rightly, that those who believe this are taken in by Cleopatra just as
much as is Caesar himself. When she says to the dying Antony
Let’s
do’t after the high Roman fashion,
And
make death proud to take us. Come, away:
This
case of that huge spirit now is cold.
Ah,
women, women! Come; we have no friend
But
resolution, and the briefest end.
This
happens before she meets Proculeius, Dolabella and Caesar (V.2.), even before
the Romans learn of Antony
Mr
Goddard’s argumentation is worth quoting at some length:
Incredibly, many readers and critics
find in the conclusion of Antony and
Cleopatra only the old Cleopatra, thinking at bottom just of herself, bent
above all things on saving herself from being shown in Caesar’s triumph. That
the old Cleopatra, bent on precisely this end and with every histrionic device
still at her command, is still present cannot indeed be questioned. But that
she is now the only or the predominant Cleopatra everything in the text
converges to deny. What has happened is that a new Cleopatra is now using the
old Cleopatra as her instrument. It is the new one who issues the orders. It is
the old one who obeys.
[…]
The fact is that the new Cleopatra, with all the histrionic
devices of the old Cleopatra at her command, acts so consummately in these last
hours of her life that she deceives not only Octavius Caesar but full half the
readers of the play. She stages a mousetrap beside which Hamlet’s seems
melodramatic and crude, enacts its main role herself, and, unlike the Prince of
Denmark, keeps her artistic integrity by never for a second revealing in
advance what its purpose is or interrupting its action for superfluous comment.
Blinded by victory and the thought of his triumph in which she is to figure,
Octavius is clay in her hands, infatuated in a sense and to a degree that she
and her lover never were. She twists him, as it were, around her little finger.
[…] Those who think that Cleopatra is driven to suicide only when she is
certain that if she does not kill herself she will be shown in Caesar’s triumph are
taken in by her as badly as is Caesar himself.
[…]
The change in
Cleopatra is again confirmed in the first words we hear from her in the last
act:
My desolation does begin to make
A better life.
Better! – a word, in that sense, not
in the lexicon of the original Cleopatra. The rapidity of the change going on
within her is registered in another word in the message by Proculeius to
Caesar:
I hourly learn
A doctrine of
obedience.
Caesar, poor fool, thinks, as she
intends he shall, that it is obedience to his will that she is hourly learning.
But it is obedience to her own new self and to her own Emperor, Antony
Caes: Arise, you shall not
kneel.
I pray you, rise; rise, Egypt
He wishes to dupe her into thinking
she can still remain a queen. But to be a queen in that sense is the last thing
that she wishes.
Cleo: Sir, the gods
Will have it thus;
my master and my lord
I must obey.
“You, Caesar, are now my lord and
master; I have no choice but to kneel and obey,” Caesar thinks she means. It
sounds like obeisance to the point of prostration. But what Cleopatra is really
saying is that she now listens only to divine commands. She must obey her
master and her lord, her Emperor Antony, not the mere emperor of this world to
whom she is kneeling in mockery.
The interlude with
her treasurer Seleucus is to the undiscerning overwhelming proof that Cleopatra
is still angling for life, if she can only get it on her own terms. But surely
this is the old histrionic Cleopatra placing all her art at the disposal of the
new Cleopatra who is bent only on death and immortal life. Whether this little
play within the play was planned in advance in consultation with Seleucus and
he too is acting, or whether it is a piece of inspired improvisation on her part
alone, struck off at the instant of her treasurer’s betrayal of her, makes
little difference. The reason Cleopatra kept back some of her treasures is the
same in either case: to throw the gullible Caesar off the track of her
intention.
[…]
He words me, girls, he words me,
that I should not
Be noble to myself,
she cries the moment she is alone with
her women. His pretended mercy has not fooled her.
But hark thee, Charmian,
and she whispers in her maid’s ear.
What she tells her of course is that she has already ordered the instrument of
death, the asp.
I have spoke already, and it is
provided,
and bids her “Go, put it to the
haste.” This tiny incident is calmly left out of account by those who think
that Cleopatra has been seriously debating between life and death in the
previous scene and that the interlude with her treasurer is just what it seems
to be – a provision for avoiding death if a way of escape with safety to her
person should present itself in the last moment. Caesar, as I said, is not the
only one these scenes deceive.
Shakespeare sees to
it that it is only after the sending
for the asp, with its clear implication that the die is cast, that Dolabella –
with one exception the last of many men to come under Cleopatra’s spell –
confides to her the fact that Caesar does indeed intend the worst. The effect
of the information is to fortify further what needs no fortifying.
[…]
Caesar enters [after
Cleo’s death]. He is first told the truth and then looks down upon it. The
sight seems to lift him outside of himself. Quite as if he had overheard those
earlier words of Cleopatra,
I dream’d there was an Emperor Antony.
O, such another sleep, that I might
see
But such another man.
and had come to declare that prayer
answered, he exclaims:
She looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace.
Another Antony
Many, including
Bradley (who says that to him they sound more like Shakespeare than Octavius),
have declared the lines out of character, entirely too imaginative for this boy
politician whom Cleopatra herself derided so unmercifully. They are. And yet
they are not. And when we see why they are not we have seen into the heart of
the play.
Caesar, practically alone, has shown himself immune to
the fascination of this woman, and only now is he in a position to realize how
utterly, even at his own game, she has outplotted and outwitted him, led him,
as it were, by the nose. Conqueror as he is, she has dragged him behind the
chariot of her superior insight and power. But all that now is nothing to him,
less than nothing, not even remembered, and, gazing down as if entranced, this
man, who had been cold to her and to her beauty while she lived, utters the
most beautiful words ever spoken of her. Dead, she proves more powerful than
the most powerful man alive. She makes him realize that there is something
mightier than might, something stronger than death. She kindles the poet within
him. She catches him in her strong toil of grace. She leads him in her triumph![12]
“An
absolute twerp’’ was Laurence Olivier’s verdict on Antony Antony Actium , with his men. He treats
them as equals and they love him for that. Even Caesar, unwillingly, is
impressed with Antony
CAESAR
When thou once
Wast
beaten from Modena
Hirtius
and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did
famine follow, whom thou fought’st against,
Though
daintily brought up, with patience more
Than
savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
The
stale [urine] of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which
beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
The
roughest berry on the rudest hedge.
Yea,
like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The
barks of trees thou browsèd’st. On the Alps
It
is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which
some did die to look on. And all this –
It
wounds thine honour that I speak it now –
Was
borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So
much as lanked not.
Go,
Eros, send his treasure after; do it.
Detain
no jot, I charge thee. Write to him –
I
will subscribe – gentle adieus and greetings.
Say
that I wish he never find more cause
To
change a master. O, my fortunes have
Corrupted
honest men! Dispatch. Enobarbus!
But
it’s a grave mistake, very often encountered unfortunately, to discuss the
title characters by themselves. Should you do so, you may well come to the
conclusion that Antony Antony
Yet
the relationship between Tony and Cleo has been misunderstood just as much as
the play itself. Laurence Olivier, who played Antony
It
was a purely physical relationship. Two very attractive human beings determined
to do wonderful things to each other. Result... suicide. There is nothing
cerebral about their love: it is pure passion, lust and enjoyment. And why not?
How would you feel alone in a chamber with that lady? I don’t think you’d want
to discuss The Times crossword.[15]
It
was a great deal more than “purely physical relationship”. Of course there is
nothing “cerebral about their love” – nor about any love, one might add – but
there certainly is a strong mental component that is often neglected. Words
like “passion” and “lust” are commonly attached to Tony and Cleo, but I don’t
think they tell the most important part of the story, much less the whole
story. Equally often, it is said that they both lost the world for love and
there their tragedy lies. I don’t buy this either. Nobody has yet made a convincing
case why the world is worth winning in the first place, nor why it is not worth
losing for quite a few things, love among them.
I
think the tragedy of Antony
When
Cleo is alone with her attendants, dreaming of Antony (I.5.), it is clear that
she is in love with him, and not just in love, but madly, furiously, blissfully,
mind-numbingly in love. She is obsessed by him. She raves about him in
extravagant terms. She thinks of nothing but Antony
CLEOPATRA
O
Charmian,
Where
think’st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he?
Or
does he walk? Or is he on his horse?
O
happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony
Do
bravely, horse, for wot’st thou whom thou mov’st?
The
demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And
burgonet of men. He’s speaking now,
Or
murmuring ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile ?’
For
so he calls me. Now I feed myself
With
most delicious poison. Think on me,
That
am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black,
And
wrinkled deep in time? 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.
Yet
she never shows anything like that to Antony Antony Antony
CLEOPATRA
If
it be love indeed, tell me how much.
There’s
beggary in the love that can be reckoned.
CLEOPATRA
I’ll
set a bourn how far to be beloved.
Then
must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
It
is easy to see, of course, why she does what she does. She is afraid of losing
him. She knows only too well that “the love that lasts longest is the love that
is never returned”, as Somerset Antony Antony
The
element of lust is not exactly prominent in Caesar’s description either, though
it is central to Pompey’s. We should never forget, of course, that these
fellows are outsiders. They have never been at the wild parties they speak of,
much less in Cleopatra’s bedroom. They rely on “news”, which is a polite name
of gossip, and it is not a little remarkable how different their accounts are:
CAESAR
[I.4.3-10.]
From Alexandria
This
is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The
lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike
Than
Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More
womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or
Vouchsafed
to think he had partners. You shall find
there
A
man who is the abstract of all faults
That
all men follow.
POMPEY
[II.1.20-27.]
But all the
charms of love,
Salt
Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip!
Let
witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both!
Tie
up the libertine in a field of feasts;
Keep
his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks
Sharpen
with cloyless sauce his appetite;
That
sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour
Even
till a Lethe’d dullness –
Strictly
speaking, Pompey is not exactly an outsider. He is one of Cleo’s ex-lovers. This
explains the naughty nature of his speculation. He assumes that what the case with
him once was must now be with Antony Antony
Enobarbus,
like Mercutio, is an entirely Shakespearean creation; he is barely a footnote
in Plutarch. Few things convince me in the Bard’s awe-inspiring genius better
than such characters. He created Enobarbus out of this tiny morsel:
So
Antonius, through the persuasions of Domitius, commanded Cleopatra to return
again into Egypt
[…]
Furthermore,
he dealt very friendly and courteously with Domitius, and against Cleopatra’s
mind. For, he being sick of an ague when goeth unto he went and took a little
boat to go to Caesar’s Octavius camp, Antonius was very sorry for it, but yet
he sent after him all his carriage, train, and men: l and the same Domitius, as
though he gave him to understand that he repented his open treason, he died
immediately after.[17]
Enobarbus
is by far the wisest and the wittiest fellow in the whole play. Cynical
satirist, salacious raconteur, astute politician and military tactician, unsurpassed
psychologist of Cleo’s seductive power and Tony’s empty poses, Enorbarbus is
the most quotable of all characters. In that tense scene with Octavius (II.2.),
he is the only one bold enough to put into words the real status quo, an
unmistakable hint from Shakespeare, I think, that the political chit-chat of Antony Antony
ENOBARBUS
Or,
if you borrow one another’s love for the instant, you may, when you hear no
more words of Pompey, return it again: you shall have time to wrangle in when
you have nothing else to do.
Thou
art a soldier only. Speak no more.
ENOBARBUS
That
truth should be silent I had almost forgot.
You
wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.
ENOBARBUS
Go
to, then; your considerate stone.
[III.7.34-40.]
Your ships are
not well manned.
Your
mariners are muleters, reapers, people
Ingross’d
by swift impress. In Caesar’s fleet
Are
those that often have ’gainst Pompey fought;
Their
ships are yare; yours, heavy. No disgrace
Shall
fall you for refusing him at sea,
Being
prepared for land.
[III.7.41-48.]
Most
worthy sir, you therein throw away
The
absolute soldiership you have by land,
Distract
your army, which doth most consist
Of
war-marked footmen, leave unexecuted
Your
own renownèd knowledge, quite forego
The
way which promises assurance, and
Give
up yourself merely to chance and hazard,
From
firm security.
Last
and most important of all, Enobarbus is the chorus who chronicles Antony Egypt
I
must with haste from hence.
ENOBARBUS
Why,
then, we kill all our women. We see how mortal an unkindness is to them. If they
suffer our departure, death’s the word.
I
must be gone.
ENOBARBUS
Under
a compelling occasion, let women die. It were pity to cast them away for
nothing, though between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing.
Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly. I have seen
her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle in
death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in
dying.
Considering
that “die” and “dying” may also mean sexual intercourse, the passage is quite
saucy indeed! When some Roman business lures her Antony
Enobarbus
grasps instantly how ridiculous Antony
Yes,
like enough, high-battled Caesar will
Unstate
his happiness and be staged to th’show
Against
a sworder! I see men’s judgments are
A
parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
Do
draw the inward quality after them
To
suffer all alike. That he should dream,
Knowing
all measures, the full Caesar will
Answer
his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued
His
judgment too.
Of
course he is right. In the next scene (IV.1.), Caesar laughs at the challenge
and refuses it. Enobarbus’ ability to anticipate the action is remarkable. When
he whispers, in another “aside”, that Thidias will be whipped (III.13.88),
well, just a few lines later Antony Antony Actium ,
have already gone to Caesar’s side three scenes earlier (III.10.31-34);
Enobarbus, against his reason, stayed then (III.10.34-36). Three scenes later, having
witnessed Antony
[III.13.41-46.]
Mine
honesty and I begin to square.
The
loyalty well held to fools does make
Our
faith mere folly. Yet he that can endure
To
follow with allegiance a fallen lord
Does
conquer him that did his master conquer
And
earns a place i’th’story.
[III.13.194-200.]
Now
he’ll outstare the lightning. To be furious,
Is
to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood
The
dove will peck the estridge; and I see still,
A
diminution in our captain’s brain
Restores
his heart: when valour preys on reason,
It
eats the sword it fights with. I will seek
Some
way to leave him.
Enobarbus’
reflections of Cleopatra are of the greatest interest – especially when they
are compared with Antony
Alack,
sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We
cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and
tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she
makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.
The
sea allusion already prepares the reader for the Battle of Actium, 14 scenes in
advance, but much the more important point is that Enorbarbus rejects the
accusations of “cunning”. There seems to be a contradiction here. If she is not
cunning, how could she be so overwhelmingly manipulative? Can manipulation be
sincere? The answer, I think, is yes. Cleo, together with Tony Montana from Scarface, could say “Me? I always tell
the truth, even when I lie.” It is in her nature to deceive everybody,
especially her lovers, to get what she wants. Many people do that of course,
but with them it is either a conscious effort or an acquired reflex. It is kind
of like charm: it can be learned by practice, but it is much more devastating
when it is natural. With Cleopatra it is innate, and that makes her very
special indeed. I am pretty sure she never was “cunning” even with Caesar in
her “salad days / When I was green in judgment” (I.5.73-74), though I am ready
to admit she had grown more proficient by the time she met Tony. Cleo’s
notorious “theatricality”, the part within the part, is yet another popular
notion that the text, as far as I am concerned, does not support.
On
the other hand, Enobarbus may well be joking. The passage is written in the
same fluent prose as his let’s-kill-all-women suggestion. It depends much on
how the actor would speak the lines, but I do think he is telling the truth
even if he pretends to be jesting.
Enobarbus
gives Agrippa and Maecenas another account of Cleo’s charms. Allowing for some
exaggeration, as might be expected from a soldier spinning a yarn to other
soldiers, it agrees well with the more intimate version to Antony
Age
cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her
infinite variety. Other women cloy
The
appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where
most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become
themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless
her when she is riggish [wanton].
Enobarbus’
death is only slightly less moving that Antony Antony Antony
[IV.6.30-39,
upon receiving his effects:]
I
am alone the villain of the earth,
And
feel I am so most. O Antony
Thou
mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid
My
better service, when my turpitude
Thou
dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.
If
swift thought break it not, a swifter mean
Shall
outstrike thought; but thought will do’t, I feel.
I
fight against thee? No, I will go seek
Some
ditch wherein to die; the foul’st best fits
My
latter part of life.
[IV.9.12-23:]
O
sovereign mistress of true melancholy,
The
poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,
That
life, a very rebel to my will,
May
hang no longer on me. Throw my heart
Against
the flint and hardness of my fault,
Which,
being dried with grief, will break to powder,
And
finish all foul thoughts. O Antony
Nobler
than my revolt is infamous,
Forgive
me in thine own particular,
But
let the world rank me in register
A
master-leaver and a fugitive
O Antony Antony
Caesar
is Antony Antony
I
can think of only three brief moments in the whole play – the farewell with his
sister (III.2.39-41), her coming back from Athens
(III.6.42-55) and the news of Antony Antony
The
reconciliation between Caesar and Antony (II.2.) is one of the most fascinating
scenes in the whole play. It is tempting to speculate what goes behind the
tense dialogue. What do the masters of the world think? Are both of them sincere? Or neither is? Is Caesar trying to
outwit Antony Poland Antony Antony
When
all is said and done, life is a constant struggle between reason and passion. Antony and Cleopatra shows the
disastrous consequences when either of these components is in great excess. Reason,
coupled with luck and ambition, may well make you master of the world, like
Octavius, but only at the heavy cost of emotional sterility. Pure passion, on
the other hand, will never lead you anywhere worth going, but the journey is
totally worthwhile and who is to say if this is not the greatest wisdom of life?
It all boils down to the old conundrum between contemplation and industry; in
extreme cases the former leads to hedonism, the latter to imperialism. Contrary
to the popular belief, I do not think the play has much to do with elusive
stuff like ethics, with the war between the virtuous and the dissolute life
that is. Antony
It is
difficult to resist, by way of conclusion, a comparison with Romeo and Juliet. Yet it should be
resisted. The parallels are entirely superficial. Both couples are famous
examples of irresistible love that would rather destroy itself than submit to
the world. Both stories end tragically with the death of the lovers. The
weapons, poison and blade, are switched, but in both cases he dies first under
the false impression that she has died before him. Dramatically more effective,
Tony and Cleo share a few moments before his death, while Romeo and Juliet,
whatever you may have seen in the movies, do not.
The
differences are enormous and far more revealing. The styles couldn’t have been
more different. The youthful exuberance of Romeo
and Juliet has been transformed into the highly condensed style of
Shakespeare’s late maturity. The star-crossed lovers are teenagers, Antony Mediterranean
was virtually the whole world. The love of Antony Antony
===================================================================
Julius Caesar
The Characters in the Play
Julius Caesar
Calphurnia, his wife
Marcus Brutus, Caius Cassius, Casca, Trebonius, Decius
Brutus, Metellus Cimber, Cinna, Caius Ligarius: conspirators against Caesar
Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, Lepidus: triumvirs after
Caesar’s death
Cicero, Publius, Poplius Lena: Senators
Flavius, Marullus: Tribunes of the People
Lucilius, Messala, Young Cato, Volumnius, Titinus,
Varro, Clitus, Claudius, Dardanus: followers of Brutus and Cassius
Portia, Marcus Brutus’s wife
Artemidorus
Cinna, a poet
Pindarus, a servant of Cassius
Lucius, Strato: servants of Brutus
A Soothsayer, A Poet, A Cobbler, A Carpenter, A Servant
of Caesar, A Servant of Antony, A Servant of Octavius, The Ghost of Caesar,
Senators, Soldiers, Plebeians, Attendants and others
----------------------------------------------------------------
Julius Caesar is the most audaciously titled
of all Shakespeare’s plays. Is there another one in which the title character
is killed in the first scene of the third act? Two grave defects stem from this
awkward construction: 1) we see too little of Caesar; 2) the last two acts are positively
anticlimactic. I think it’s better to take stock of these defects before
proceeding further.
In the play
named after him, Julius Caesar appears in only three scenes (I.2., II.2.,
III.1.) and speaks exactly 135 lines (out of 2455 overall). Most of his words
are sheer claptrap. Now he is lost in self-aggrandizement, likening himself to
the constant Northern star (III.1.60) or grandiloquently stating that
danger is more afraid of him than he is of it (II.2.44-45), then he is a goofy
old man, deaf with one ear and foolishly superstitious, or a callous husband
who humours his hysterical wife (II.2.). I suppose the last thought that passed
through his head before he fell in Pompey’s feet was something like “Without
Brutus I might have remained a little more than a footnote in history, but now –
now I will become a legend forever.” Caesar’s opinion of himself might have
been obnoxious had it not been ridiculous. I can’t help wondering how he
managed to attain the nearly absolute power and godlike status he enjoys among
the Roman people, if not among the Roman aristocracy. There is only one place
where Caesar hints – just hints – at his stunning powers of observation that
might have been instrumental in his ascent to dictatorship. This is, of course,
his penetrating portrait of Cassius (I.2.193-194, 200-209):
Yond
Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He
thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
[…]
He reads much;
He
is a great observer, and he looks
Quite
through the deeds of men. He loves no plays,
As
thou dost, Antony
Seldom
he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As
if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit
That
could be moved to smile at anything.
Such
men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles
they behold a greater than themselves,
And
therefore are they very dangerous.
If he only
knew how right he was! Some critics, like Norman Sanders in this edition, have
tried to find some complexity in this character. What I find is only a demented
old man, hardly worth bothering about, certainly not worth conspiracy and
assassination. Likewise, wise critics have pointed out that Caesar controls the
action even after his death. True, of course, and I don’t mean insignificant
details like his ghost. Both Brutus (V.3.90) and Cassius (V.3.45-46) commit
suicide with Caesar’s name on their lips. The whole civil war that ends at Philippi results from Caesar’s assassination. But all
this is a poor substitute for the feeble Caesar “in the flesh” (to be read “in
Shakespeare’s lines”, not in whatever historical facts we know of him). He may
control the action of the whole play, but his very character undermines its
meaning.
The
unevenness of characterization extends to the plot as well. After the great
scene with Antony
Nevertheless,
Julius Caesar is a very fine play.
Tragedy it is not, but as a tense drama it works really well. It shows how
momentous political events may be caused by purely personal motives. It is the
ultimate proof that history is made by individuals, not by the masses. It contains some of the
finest examples of psychological manipulation, both on personal (I.2.) and social
(III.2.) level, ever put on paper. The language lacks the concise power and the
rich imagery of the later plays, but on the lower level of pure drama it works
supremely well; some of the longer speeches may sound slightly artificial, but
none fails to propel the action or enrich the characters. The play has spawned
a respectable number of quotes out of the context:
There is a tide in the
affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood,
leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of
their life
Is bound in shallows and
in miseries.
[Brutus, IV.3.216-219.]
The evil that men do lives
after them,
The good is oft interrèd
with their bones;
[Antony
He thinks too much: such
men are dangerous.
[Caesar, I.2.204.]
Cowards die many
times before their deaths;
The valiant
never taste of death but once.
[Caesar, II.2.32-33.]
I really
don’t understand the protagonist debate about this play. Brutus and Cassius are
obviously the main characters. Both are fascinating in themselves, but they
also illuminate each other. Neither makes sense without the other, while Caesar might
never have graced the stage for all they care. (The title in the First Folio, “The
Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar”, if it did originate with Shakespeare at all, was one
of his finest ironical touches.) Mark Antony is a remarkably complex character,
considering the limited space dedicated to him, and he deserves a full
discussion. Let’s have a look at these people.
Brutus is a
sorry specimen. Torn asunder by contradictory qualities, he is the closest to a
genuinely tragic character, but he never quite makes it. He is admirably
idealistic, but not very bright; noble and upright in intention, but self-righteous
and obnoxious in action. He has a genius for making wrong decisions: to leave Antony alive (II.1.162-183), to let Antony
speak at the funeral (III.1.231)[18],
to move the army to Philippi for a final
showdown (IV.3.201-222): these are just a few that he hopelessly bungles, with
fatal consequences. Cassius is correct on all occasions, and says so, but he lacks
the authority to overrule Brutus’ decisions.
Harold
Goddard, whose chapter on Julius Caesar
is far less convincing than his take on Antony
and Cleopatra, claims that if Brutus’ downfall is not a tragedy he doesn’t know what it is.[19] I have no doubt it was a
tragedy to him. It is not to me. Brutus is too much of a fool to excite my
sympathy – he manages to fool completely even himself – and without sympathy
there is, of course, no tragedy; the whole story becomes a mere part of the
statistics. Mr Goddard’s fantasies on symbolism – Portia being Brutus’
conscience, Lucius being his innocence – don’t help the matter, either. I
appreciate these efforts to endear “the noblest Roman of them all” (V.5.68, Antony Antony
This was the noblest Roman
of them all.
All the conspirators save
only he
Did that they did in envy
of great Caesar;
He only, in a general
honest thought
And common good to all,
made one of them.
His life was gentle, and
the elements
So mixed in him, that
Nature might stand up
And say to all the world,
‘This was a man!’
Brutus’ great
soliloquy (II.1.10-34) is a magnificent piece of dramatic poetry, “one of the
first soliloquies in Shakespeare’s tragedies to display a mind trying to work
its way clear through a difficult problem”[20],
a dramatic device to be brought to perfection in Hamlet (probably written not much later). It is curious, however,
to observe his reasons for Caesar’s death.
It
must be by his death; and for my part,
I
know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But
for the general. – He would be crowned.
How
that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It
is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And
that craves wary walking. Crown him! – that!
And
then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That
at his will he may do danger with.
The
abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse
from power; and, to speak truth of Caesar,
I
have not known when his affections swayed
More
than his reason. But ’tis a common proof,
That
lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto
the climber-upward turns his face;
But
when he once attains the upmost round,
He
then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks
in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By
which he did ascend: so Caesar may.
Then,
lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel
Will
bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion
it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would
run to these and these extremities;
And
therefore think him as a serpent’s egg
Which,
hatched, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And
kill him in the shell.
Clearly,
Brutus decides against Caesar’s life not because of what Caesar is, but of what he might become. This may pass as a noble motive for murder only in a
mentally deficient individual. Nor does it speak in Brutus’ favour that never
for a single line does he reflect what he is going to do about Rome
As for the
future of Rome Liberty Liberty
How
many ages hence
Shall
this our lofty scene be acted over,
In
states unborn, and accents yet unknown!
Cassius is one
of the great villains in Shakespeare. Bitter and hate-driven man, insanely
jealous of Caesar’s position, far more intelligent and less impulsive than Brutus,
Cassius is a dangerous rival. Both G. B. Harrison and Norman Sanders have
discovered in the back of his mind some remnants of republican ideals. I can’t
say that I have. To my mind, when he slips into idealistic reverie,
occasionally, he does so for the sake of appearance, to add more credibility,
more decency, to his argument. He is far more politically and militarily astute
than Brutus. It is he, Cassius, who suggests that Antony
should be murdered, too (II.2.155-161), that he must not speak at Caesar’s
funeral (III.1.231-236), or that their army should not move to Philippi but
wait for the enemy in Sardis Antony
Your
voice shall be as strong as any man’s
In
the disposing of new dignities.
[…]
But
what compact mean you to have with us?
Will
you be pricked in number of our friends;
Or
shall we on, and not depend on you?
Like the
witches in Macbeth, Cassius
insinuates in Brutus what is already in him but he is afraid of confessing even
to himself. This exquisite manipulation forms the best part of one of the most
terrific scenes in the play (I.2.). Cassius is a puppeteer par excellence. He mingles a
vicious harangue against Caesar, who is deemed physically and mentally inferior
to them, with subtle playing on his friend’s considerable vanity, for Brutus is
a nobleman from a family with great traditions in expelling tyrants from Rome,
throwing in for good measure some stuff about the future of Rome to stir his
victim’s sense of moral obligation. Brutus is noncommittal, but the seed is planted
and, as we see a few scenes later in his orchard (II.1.), it bears fruits.
Cassius ends the scene with a brutally frank soliloquy in which he freely
confesses what – and why – he has been trying to do. These lines might have
been written for Iago (I.2.305-319):
Well, Brutus, thou art
noble; yet, I see,
Thy honourable mettle may
be wrought
From that it is disposed:
therefore it is meet
That noble minds keep ever
with their likes;
For who so firm that
cannot be seduced?
Caesar doth bear me hard,
but he loves Brutus.
If I were Brutus now, and
he were Cassius,
He should not humour me. I
will this night,
In several hands, in at
his windows throw,
As if they came from
several citizens,
Writings, all tending to
the great opinion
That Rome
Caesar’s ambition shall be
glancèd at.
And after this, let Caesar
seat him sure;
For we will shake him, or
worse days endure.
The Brutus-Cassius
confrontation (IV.3.) is the natural outcome of this uneasy
union. Cassius obviously “seduced” Brutus to lend some respectability
to his revenge to Caesar; he well knew he didn’t have the authority to pull it
off. Brutus let himself be seduced and convinced his feeble mind that he
was acting for the good of Rome Sardis , far away from
home indeed, hunted by the armies of Antony
In a much neglected scene permeated
with thunder and lightning (I.3.), Cassius works his charms on Casca in a
completely different manner but with exactly the same result; Casca being a
much flightier man and therefore easier target, the results are actually better.
The scenes make for a revealing comparison, and it was a stroke of genius on
Will’s part to place them one after another. Cassius has a gift for exploiting every
man’s weakness. Casca is scared to death of the stormy night, he regards it as
some sort of supernatural menace, and his cynical detachment from the previous
scene has now vanished. Cassius seizes the moment. In a fit of splendid
rhetoric, he makes Caesar look “most like this dreadful night”. Casca is
interested but not impressed. Cassius checks himself and switches to a blunt
attack on Casca’s vanity, much more direct than in the case of Brutus, suggesting
that he is only a “willing bondman” (I.3.113) under Caesar’s yoke. That settles
it. Casca is won completely for the cause in half the space in which Brutus is
only half won. It’s a brilliant performance (I.3.103-120):
CASSIUS
And why should Caesar be a
tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would
not be a wolf,
But that he sees the
Romans are but sheep.
He were no lion, were not
Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will
make a mighty fire
Begin it with weak straws.
What trash is Rome
What rubbish, and what
offal, when it serves
For the base matter to
illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar!
But, O grief,
Where hast thou led me? I
perhaps speak this
Before a willing bondman;
then I know
My answer must be made.
But I am armed,
And dangers are to me
indifferent.
CASCA
You speak to Casca, and to
such a man
That is no fleering
tell-tale. Hold, my hand;
Be factious for redress of
all these griefs,
And I will set this foot
of mine as far
As who goes farthest.
[II.1.183-189.]
CASSIUS
Yet I fear him;
For in the ingrafted love
he bears to Caesar –
BRUTUS
Alas, good Cassius, do not
think of him.
If he love Caesar, all
that he can do
Is to himself: take
thought, and die for Caesar;
And that were much he
should; for he is given
To sports, to wildness and
much company.[21]
[III.1.143-146.]
BRUTUS
I know that we shall have
him well to friend.
CASSIUS
I wish we may: but yet
have I a mind
That fears him much; and
my misgiving still
Falls shrewdly to the
purpose.
(Bertrand
Russell once wondered why propaganda is so much more effective in breeding
hatred than friendship. He reached the conclusion that “the human heart as
modern civilisation has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship.”[22]
I think he was only partly right. The proclivities of the human heart, alas,
can hardly be doubted, but I think they haven’t changed much through the ages.
What is true in our modern world was pretty much true in Elizabethan England or
ancient Rome Antony
This is the
most devastating moment for Brutus in the whole play. For all authority and
respect that he commands, he proves himself totally incapable of finishing what
he started with Caesar’s assassination. The greatest irony of all is that he
doesn’t even know it. He leaves the stage, rather presumptuously, before Antony
Harold
Goddard, amazingly, calls Brutus’ address “a dishonest speech”[23],
claiming that Antony Antony
Brutus’s speech is in prose:
Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent,
that you may hear. Believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour,
that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that
you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s,
to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar, was no less than his. If then, that
friend demand, why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I
lov’d Caesar less, but that I lov’d Rome
As Caesar lov’d me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I
rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but as he was ambitious, I slew
him. There is tears, for his love; joy, for his fortune; honour, for his
valour; and death, for his ambition.
Who is here so base, that would be a bondman? If any, speak, for
him have I offended. Who is here so rude, that would not be a Roman? If any,
speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so vile, that will not love his
country? If any, speak, for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.
It is the speech of a trained orator who has carefully
composed his oration in sets of clauses elaborately balanced against each
other. The rhythms are pleasing, the phrases apt and the sentiments
appropriate; and yet by its very rhetoric the effect is cold and complacent. The
plebeians are moved to respectful applause, but they understand so little of the
principles at stake that one of them cries out, “Let him be Caesar’.
When Antony enters with the
corpse of Caesar, Brutus is so sure of himself and his audience that he gives
place to Antony
Antony’s speech is a much subtler performance, for he knows more
of the tricks of the rabble rouser – rhythms which are almost incantations, phrases
repeated with such subtlety of intonation that the meaning is completely
reversed, the direct appeal to sentiment, pity, gratitude, horror and greed,
the rise and fall of tone, the catch in the voice, the histrionic tears. The
difference between the two orators is fundamental. Brutus makes his set speech
and expects his audience to agree; Antony
At the beginning Antony
Brutus has left the mob with three ideas: that Caesar was
ambitious, that his murder was a good deed, and that the murderers are
therefore honourable men. Antony
His opening words are uttered quietly, for the crowd is still
under the sway of Brutus. Having won a hearing, he begins by apparently
agreeing with Brutus:
The
noble Brutus,
Hath
told you Caesar was ambitious:
If
it were so, it was a grievous fault –
and
Brutus’s supporters agree –
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it –
and Brutus’s supporters cannot disagree. Antony
Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest
(For Brutus is an honourable man,
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral –
And on such occasions even when the dead man has been murdered
by his political opponents, one can at least pay personal tribute to his
private virtues.
He
was my friend, faithful, and just to me;
But
Brutus says, he was ambitious,
And
Brutus is an honourable man.
There is a slightly heavier stress on the word “honourable”,
but still no hint of irony.
He
hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose
ransoms, did the general coffers fill:
Did
this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When
that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept –
sheer
clap-trap, but it passes.
Ambition
should be made of sterner stuff,
Yet
Brutus says, he was ambitious:
And
Brutus is an honourable man –
‘Honourable’ is beginning to grow somewhat blowsy, but the
audience is listening intently.
You all did see, that on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse.
Was this ambition?
– he
demands, and from the crowd comes back a murmur of sympathy.
Now Antony Antony
Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious:
And sure he is an honourable man.
The
crowd retorts, but more loudly, ‘No’. Antony
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am, to speak what I do know –
the plain, private friend who is
too simple to understand any of these high mysteries of the politicians. Then
with the catch in the throat and the voice broken as if by sudden
uncontrollable emotion –
You all did love him once, not without cause,
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
At this point he breaks down
completely so that the crowd may have a chance to sympathize with his sobs. The
effect has been perfectly calculated and timed. When he hears the remark, ‘Poor
soul, his eyes are red as fire with weeping’, he knows that the game is won.
The first phase of the speech is now
complete; and the sympathy of the crowd is with the dead Caesar and against his
murderers. Antony
But yesterday, the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the World: now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.
The crowd are in the right mood, but
they need considerable goading. He sets about stirring them into action, but he
will keep them in check until they have reached the pitch of fury. Antony
O masters! if I
were dispos’d to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage.
but
with an effort he holds himself in –
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong:
Who (you all know) are honourable men.
The crowd are getting excited.
Something tangible, something that they can see, will stimulate them still
further. Antony
They were traitors: honourable men!
The second phase in the speech has
been accomplished, and Antony
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle, I remember
The first time Caesar ever put it on,
‘Twas on a summer’s evening in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii.
Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made –
It is sheer fantasy, for Antony
Through this, the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d,
And as he pluck’d his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolv’d
If Brutus so unkindly knock’d, or no:
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel.
So our honourable Brutus has turned
out to be that meanest of creatures, the man who stabs his best friend:
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar lov’d him:
This was the most unkindest cut of all:
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty heart,
And in his mantle, muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey’s statue,
(Which all the while ran blood), great Caesar fell.
This touch about Pompey’s statue is
the most cynical of all, for this same crowd, a few weeks ago, had made holiday
over Caesar’s destruction of Pompey, and now in their muddled heads Caesar and
Pompey are somehow connected as martyrs for Rome Antony Antony
They that have done this deed, are honourable.
What private griefs they have, alas I know not,
That made them do it: they are wise, and honourable,
And will no doubt with reasons answer you.
He
knows well enough that they are well past reason as he continues:
I come not (friends) to steal away your hearts,
I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But (as you know me all) a plain blunt man,
That love my friend, and that they know full well,
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither writ nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood.
After
this piece of irony he works up into a crescendo of emotional appeal:
I only speak right on:
I tell you that, which you yourselves do know,
Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar, that should move
The stones of Rome
With the idea of mutiny it would seem that he had ended his
peroration and the crowd are ready for action, but once more he pulls them
back. They had forgotten Caesar’s will. When they have learned that Caesar’s
last wish was a generous bequest of money to every citizen and his estate for
public use, Antony
The great Forum Scene is a wonderful example of skilful
demagogy, and Shakespeare devised the whole speech from the merest hint in
Plutarch:
Afterwards,
when Caesar’s body was brought into the market place, Antonius making his
funeral oration in praise of the dead, according to the ancient custom of Rome,
and perceiving that his words moved the common people to compassion, he framed
his eloquence to make their hearts yearn the more: and taking Caesar’s gown all
bloody in his hand, he laid it open to the sight of them all, shewing what a
number of cuts and holes it had upon it. Therewithal the people fell presently
into such a rage and mutiny, that there was no more order kept amongst the
common people.[24]
I have only
one thing to add. Shakespeare wisely takes care that we should witness Antony Antony
For once I
agree with G. B. Harrison that Julius
Caesar is not a “deep tragedy”. Neither Caesar as a fallen dictator nor
Brutus as a corrupt nobleman comes close to be a tragic personage. To me, the
former remains a failure in terms of characterisation, and the latter is much too noble,
idealistic, upright, honest, etc., etc. – in short, stupid – to excite any deep
sympathy. Brutus is pathetic rather than tragic, but he is nevertheless a
fascinating character. So are Cassius and Antony
===================================================================
Coriolanus
The Characters in the Play
Caius Martius, afterwards Caius Martius Coriolanus
Titus Lartius, Cominius: Roman generals against the
Volsces
Menenius Agrippa, friend of Coriolanus
Sicinius Velutus, Junius Brutus: Tribunes of the People,
opposed to Coriolanus
A Crowd of Roman Citizens
A Roman Herald
Nicanor, a Roman in the play of the Volsces
Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus
Virgilia, wife of Coriolanus
Young Martius, son of Coriolanus
Valeria, friend of Virgilia
A Gentlewoman attending on Virgilia
Tullus Aufidius, General of the Volsces
A Lieutenant under Aufidius
Conspirators with Aufidius
Adrian, a Volsce
A Citizen of Antium
Two Volscian Guards
Roman and Volscian Senators, Patricians, Aediles, Lictors,
Soldiers, Messengers, Volscian Citizen, Servants of Aufidius, and other
Attendants
---------------------------------------------------------
My only association with Coriolanus, before reading Plutarch and Shakespeare,
was an overture by Beethoven. Though it was inspired by a work (1804) of Heinrich
Joseph von Collin (1771–1811), this violent music might very well fit
Shakespeare’s play as well. It took me years, including re-reading and
re-reviewing of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, to finally read and
review Coriolanus.
The play is difficult for a number of reasons. It is long and complex, to
begin with. It consists of 29 scenes and 3328 lines, which means 13 scenes less
but 300 lines more than Antony and
Cleopatra. Indeed, it means about a hundred lines longer than Othello or Lear. The language is even more compact and more densely allusive
than usual for the late Shakespeare. This makes for a slow read and a good deal
of re-reading. Last and least, though set in Rome, this is not really a Roman
play. Coriolanus belongs to a much earlier time (5th century BC)
than the best-known times of the Republic and the Empire. G. R. Hibbard, to
whose notes I am indebted, has summarised the play and the verse very well in
the beginning of his introduction:
Coriolanus is play of action, not reflection; its subject is
strife and dissension. Five strands of irreconcilable conflict are tightly
woven together to form the fabric of the plot. They are: first, the wars
between the infant Roman republic and the neighbouring state of the Volsces;
secondly, the intense personal rivalry between the hero, Rome’s greatest
soldier, and the Volscian leader, Tullus Aufidius; thirdly, the struggle for
power within Rome itself between the patrician class, whose most intransigent
member is Coriolanus, and the plebeians, organized and manipulated by their two
Tribunes – Brutus and Sicinius; fourthly, the battle of wits between Coriolanus
and his mother, Volumnia, over matters of political expediency; and, finally,
the conflict within the hero himself when he is torn between a desire for
revenge of the city that has rewarded his services to it with banishment, and
the pull of the natural affection which he feels for his mother, his wife, and
his young son.
The verse matches the action. Austere, rugged and often harsh,
it is a perfect vehicle for the tirades, the exhortations, the eulogies and the
accusations with which the play is filled. Almost devoid of lyricism, the
poetry of Coriolanus has a hard, stony
or metallic timbre that is peculiarly its own, as T. S. Eliot recognized when
he began his poem ‘Coriolanus’ with the words:
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone,
oakleaves, horses’ heels
Over the paving.
To this I would add that the five reasons mentioned above are by no means
of equal importance. The third and the fourth dominate the play. The second is
less prominent but ultimately important. The first is merely background. The
fifth is not even that (but should have been a lot more, as I am going to argue
later).
The greatest problem with this play is the title character. No other of
Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, not even Hamlet, dominates the play named after
him so thoroughly. Virtually all the time Coriolanus is either on the stage or
talked about by the other characters. He is a very curious creature, a
combustible mixture of vice and virtue, common sense and uncommon temper.
Coriolanus is an example of exclusive military mentality I have no sympathy
with. If you ask what makes him tick, the obvious answer would be war, only war
and nothing else but war. The blood he sheds on the battlefield is “rather physical”
(I.5.17), i.e. as good for him physically as a medicine (blood-letting was
considered a panacea for all disorders at the time). He is typically
extravagant in his praise of his nemesis, and this is made clear in the very
beginning (I.1.231-4)
Were half to half the world by th’ears and he
Upon my party, I’d revolt, to make
Only my wars with him. He is a lion
That I am proud to hunt.
Though there is only one battle in the beginning (I.4-8), war is never
absent from this play. It is constantly kept in the background. “If the wars
eat us not up, they [the rich] will”, says one mutinous citizen (I.1.82-3). Most
brutally cynical on the subject are the two Servingmen in the end of IV.5, a
brilliant “digression”, like the two Officers in II.2 (see below), which only a
truly great playwright would think of including. It is this type of mentality
that makes possible, indeed inevitable, military monsters like Coriolanus (IV.5.225-40):
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Why, then we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is
nothing, but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad-makers.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does
night. It’s spritely walking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very
apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard
children than war’s a destroyer of men.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
‘Tis so. And as wars in some sort may be said to be a
ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Ay, and it makes men hate one another.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Reason: because they then less need one another. The wars for
my money. I hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians.
The crowning vice of Coriolanus is pride. It is important, at this point,
to distinguish between pride and vanity. There is quite a difference between
them. Nobody, to my knowledge, has defined that better in fewer words than W.
H. Auden. It is ridiculous to paraphrase his prose, so here is the original:
A vain person is always vain about something. He overestimates the importance of some quality or
exaggerates the degree to which he possesses it, but the quality has some real
importance and he does possess it to some degree. The fantasy of overestimation
or exaggeration makes the vain person comic, but the fact that he cannot be
vain about nothing makes his vanity a venial sin, because it is always open to
correction by appeal to objective fact.
A proud person, on the other hand, is not proud of anything, he is proud, he exists proudly. Pride is neither comic nor venial, but
the most mortal of all sins because, lacking any basis in concrete particulars,
it is both incorrigible and absolute: one cannot be more or less proud, only
proud or humble.[25]
Now, Coriolanus is one of the least vain characters in all fiction. He
absolutely disdains praise and public honours. When his military exploits are
about to be praised, he bluntly says he doesn’t want to listen: “I have some
wounds upon me, and they smart / To hear themselves remembered.” (I.9.?). Later
he reiterates the same sentiment: “I had rather have my wounds to heal again / Than
hear say how I got them.” (II.2.67-8). And he pointedly leaves the stage, much
to the consternation of everybody else. When he is welcomed in Rome with pomp
and circumstance under his new name, “Coriolanus”, he cuts the festivities with
a tongue sharper than his sword (II.1.161): “No more of this; it does offend my
heart.” Nor does he want the consulship. His mother does. She “has a charter to
extol her blood” (I.9.14), in the accurate words of her son. He even refuses
special payment for his services, calling it “a bribe to pay my sword” and insists
on being as any other soldier (I.9.36-40).
But pride is another matter. The whole play may be said to be, in the apt
words of G. B. Harrison, “full length study of the character of an individual
who suffered from an intolerable pride”.[26] This is attested by everybody, first of all, naturally, by the two tribunes
(I.1.250-1):
SICINIUS
Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius?
BRUTUS
He has no equal.
You are right to say that the testimony of enemies, unless in case of
praise, is hardly to be trusted. Yet even Menenius, a diluted and tiresome
version of Enobarbus but the closest to father Coriolanus ever had, his best
friend and his greater defender against the tribunes, largely confirms this (III.1.254-9):
His nature is too noble for the world.
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth.
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent,
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death.
Everything Coriolanus says or does on the stage confirms this description. Whether
he is too noble or too proud for world, that is a matter of semantics. One can
admire his refusal to flatter or be flattered, his rigid avoidance of hypocrisy
and his wearing his heart in his mouth (i.e. his bluntness), but these
admirable qualities are offset by haughtiness, conceit and anger almost
ludicrous in degree.
The most conspicuous expression of this is Coriolanus’ unqualified contempt
for the people. In the very first line he speaks, he addresses them as “you
dissentious rogues” (I.1.162). Three lines later, he launches a fearsome tirade
(I.1.165-86):
He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,
That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;
Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice
Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is
To make him worthy whose offence subdues him
And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate; and your affections are
A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. He that depends
Upon your favours swims with fins of lead
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?
With every minute you do change a mind
And call him noble that was now your hate,
Him vile that was your garland. What’s the matter
That in these several places of the city
You cry against the noble Senate, who,
Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else
Would feed on one another?
All this, later confirmed with even greater force (III.3.120-35), sounds
rather unfashionable in our presumably democratic age. But I, for one, find Coriolanus’
arguments thought-provoking, even inspiring. This does not necessarily apply to
his behaviour. In the great scene in which he asks the citizens for the
consulship (II.3), Coriolanus treats the people with such verbal brutality that
it’s a miracle he’s not murdered there and then. Instead, they give him the
consulship! When he is openly accused that he has “not indeed loved the common
people”, his reply is devastating: “You should account me the more virtuous
that I have not been common in my love.” (II.3.93-4). The pros and cons of the
impasse are most acutely analysed by the lively prose of the two Officers in
the beginning of II.2, a marvellous touch of Shakespearean craftsmanship (II.2.7-22):
SECOND OFFICER
Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the
people, who ne’er loved them; and there be many that they have loved, they know
not wherefore. So that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better
a ground. Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him
manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition, and out of his noble
carelessness lets them plainly see’t.
FIRST OFFICER
If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved
indifferently [would be wavering impartially] ‘twixt doing them neither good
nor harm. But he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render it
him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. Now
to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that
which he dislikes – to flatter them for their love.
The scene in which the tribunes incense the crowd against Coriolanus (the
end of II.3.) fully vindicates Coriolanus’ harsh opinion of the people. They
are a mindless mob, easily swayed by rhetorical nonsense in any direction a
demagogue wants. A mob, moreover, loves nothing better than to be told what to
do, whom to hate and, best of all, leave the blame to somebody else. Depose
Coriolanus and “lay the fault on us”, the tribunes say. The sheep are game. But
as Hazlitt has noted perceptively, in his own way Coriolanus is just as fickle
as the rabble:
Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the people: yet, the
instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he turns
his arms against his country. If his country was not worth defending, why did
he build his pride on its defence?[27]
Whatever virtues Coriolanus may be invested with, familial affection is not
among them. This is why the great scene (closely based on Plutarch) in which
Volumnia convinces her son to have mercy on Rome (V.3) comes out of the blue
and carries no conviction. We have never seen Coriolanus showing any great
affection for his mother, much less for his wife and son whom he barely notices
when they are on the stage. The kindest words he has said to his wife are a
gentle rebuke that she should cry when he is back from the front (II.1.168-72):
My gracious silence, hail!
Wouldst thou have laughed had I come coffined home,
That weep’st to see me triumph? Ay, my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioles wear,
And mothers that lack sons.
Even in the leave-taking scene (IV.1.), in which the title character is
shown to better advantage than anywhere else according to the editor,
Coriolanus is hardly bursting with affection for his family. He is rather
exasperated with the whole thing: “Come, leave your tears. A brief farewell.” (IV.1.1.).
In any case, he is more concerned with himself than with others: “I shall be
loved when I am lacked. [...] I’ll do well yet.” (IV.1.15, 21). So little
affection does Coriolanus show for his family throughout the play that lines
like “But out, affection” towards the end (V.3.24), when he sees his mother,
wife and son approaching, sound unintentionally comic. And yet there is some
evidence further in this crucial scene that Coriolanus has warmed up towards
his wife. He now addresses her more gently and apparently even kisses her (V.3.42-48):
Best of my flesh,
Forgive my tyranny; but do not say
For that, ‘Forgive our Romans.’ O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear, and my true lip
Hath virgined it e’er since.
If Coriolanus nevertheless remains deficient in humanity until the end,
it’s hard to blame him. He never had a chance with a mother like that.
Volumnia may not be one of the great female characters in Shakespeare, but
she is certainly among the most memorable. Scary lady! Macbeth’s wife, by
comparison, is overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Volumnia is a
maniac madly in love with her son, or rather with her ambition as expressed
through her son. She has already mapped his career, military and political, to
the last detail. She would not tolerate opposition, much less idleness. Had she
had a dozen sons as dear to her as Coriolanus, she tells us (I.3.22-5), she
would have preferred that “eleven die nobly for their country than one
voluptuously surfeit out of action.” When she and Menenius discuss the wounds
of Coriolanus (II.1.137-50), you cannot but wonder what kind of sadists would
lead a conversation like this.
G. B. Harrison has made some fun of the once popular Victorian notion a
great man is a creature of his mother. He quoted George Sanders in whose
opinion Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother who died in September 1608 (possibly
around the time Coriolanus was
written), was reincarnated in Volumnia, “this one sublime mother-form, the
proudest and most highly-wrought that he has drawn”. To which G. B. H. adds the
devastating postscript:
To which it might be added that if in Volumnia Shakespeare
represented his own mother, he feared and detested her all his life but never
dared to say so until she was dead.[28]
The conflict between Coriolanus and Volumnia is just as important as that
between Coriolanus and the people. Perhaps more so. I use the word “conflict”
quite deliberately. Their very first meeting is marked by tension between the
mother’s ambition and the son’s pride (II.1.190-6):
VOLUMNIA
I have lived
To see inherited my very wishes
And the buildings of my fancy. Only
There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but
Our Rome will cast upon thee.
CORIOLANUS
Know, good mother,
I had rather be their servant in my way,
Than sway with them in theirs.
What happens later in the play is one disaster after another. Twice does
Volumnia make Coriolanus betray his own nature, first when she convinces him to
submit to the people’s tribunal (III.3.), and then when she pleads with him to
save Rome (V.3.). The consequences are disastrous. The first time leads to the banishment,
the second to the death, of Coriolanus.
Harold Goddard has argued with his typical vigour that: 1) Coriolanus, far
from being an inhuman monster by birth, was made one by Volumnia in his early
childhood; and 2) in the great mother-son confrontation towards the end, far
from succumbing to Volumnia’s baleful influence yet again, Coriolanus breaks
from it once and for all. Both cases are tenuous but worth considering.[29]
The first case is more solid but rather overstated. If Coriolanus had
really been such a tender-hearted and sensitive boy, as the author implies, it
is hard to believe that he was so thoroughly corrupted by Volumnia’s influence
without having ever rebelled so far. But Mr Goddard does make some interesting
points. The butterfly metaphor is one of them. Coriolanus’ little son, a very
minor character but still a nice illustration of Volumnia’s “martial
indoctrination in childhood”, is reported to “mammock” (tear to pieces)
butterflies in “one on ‘s father’s moods” (I.3.66-7). Far from being a casual
figure of speech, this is later brought again by Menenius (V.4.11-14):
There is differency between a grub and a butterfly, yet your
butterfly was a grub. This Marcius is grown from man to dragon. He has wings,
he’s more than a creeping thing.
The dragon metaphor is not casual, either. Coriolanus likens himself to “a
lonely dragon” in his exile (IV.1.30). The point of all this, according to Mr
Goddard, is that Volumnia has all but effected in her son the vile metamorphosis
from butterfly into a dragon. Ironically, when she once needs him to show mercy
rather than mercilessness (V.3), “the butterfly wins out over the dragon”. To
Mr Goddard’s credit, and unusual for him, he is not very dogmatic. But if you
accept his idea, he offers a tantalising parallel with Hamlet:
If there is anything in all this, Coriolanus is in the same
situation as Hamlet, forced into a role intolerable to his soul. Only the
miscasting began so much earlier that Marcius is wholly unconscious of the perversion
his mother has effected.
The moment we grasp this violence that was done him as a
child, a dozen traits of the man are explained. His arrogance, first and
foremost – which is nothing but his tenderness turned inside out. His sense of
honor – because he has not been honorable to himself. His at times almost
quixotic insistence on the truth – because his military career is founded on a
lie. Even his physical courage – which in its frenzied intensity is revenge for
his failure in moral courage in not being himself. Hamlet overidealizing his
father, Hamlet tearing loose from his companions to follow the Ghost, Hamlet
sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their doom, gives us in flashes what
Coriolanus, except in flashes, is, one might almost say, professionally. But
here we must discriminate nicely between the genuine courage, honor, and truth
of a congenitally courageous, honorable, and truthful nature and the
exaggeration of these virtues to balance the outrage they underwent from
infancy – on and at his mother’s knee.
Much of this – indeed, all of this – is, of course, open to question. It
seems just a little too neat, too convenient, too perfectly fitting with Mr
Goddard’s favourite unconscious. There is precious little in the text to help
you out with that “nicely discrimination”.
The very foundations of Mr Goddard’s hypothesis are somewhat shaky. The
only evidence in the text he has to show how tender and sensitive a boy
Coriolanus was is to quote his mother on his “comeliness” (I.3.7) – quite
irrelevant really! Some testimony from Menenius, who is always eager to defend
Coriolanus and has known him from a boy, would have been helpful, even
decisive. But does Menenius, in his exhausting garrulity, ever mention what a
sweet and kind boy Coriolanus was? If he does, I have missed the passage and so
have Mr Goddard.
Perhaps more stimulating is the acting metaphor. It came as naturally to
Shakespeare as the entomological one:
As Shakespeare doubtless reverted to his own boyhood in
Stratford for the figure of the butterfly, so now he goes to his own profession
of actor-playwright for his metaphor of a man playing a theatrical role for
which he is not fitted. Little does Coriolanus know that, cast for it by his
mother before he had any choice, he has been doing practically that all his life.
Coriolanus several times refers to his acting a part (II.2.142, III.2.105).
Although in both cases he means deliberate acts of hypocrisy he is asked to
perform for the people, Mr Goddard seems to suggest that the remarks may have
some significance as an unconscious expression of his lifelong bondage to
Volumnia. The most poignant reference comes when he meets his wife for the last
time: “Like a dull actor now / I have forgot my part and I am out [at fault]”
(V.3.40-1). “The old metaphor!” So exclaims Mr Goddard, and continues (the
words of Coriolanus quoted above are deliberately repeated here):
But with what irony Shakespeare now uses it! So far from being
a dull actor who forgets his part, it is all his life since childhood up to now
that Coriolanus has been a dull actor – though, because he was scarcely to
blame, miscast would be a better word
– and now for the first time he finds the role for which he was made. He has
caught the butterfly, but he does not mammock it. With words sufficient in
themselves to foretell that the one who utters them will never be able to set
vengeance above love, he takes Virgilia in his arms:
O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgined it e’er since.
Mr Goddard’s analysis of this great mother-son scene (V.3.), the second
case mentioned above, is rather more fanciful. It relies more on rhetoric than
on argument. Comparing this kiss with Brutus and Portia on the morning of
Caesar’s assassination is misguided, to say the least. Comparing it with
Othello and Desdemona on his return to Cyprus is frankly idiotic. I don’t think
the fact that Menenius attributes Coriolanus’ mercy entirely to Volumnia’s
influence “is almost enough in itself to prove that Shakespeare doesn’t. It is
a way he often uses for slipping in his own opinion”. This seems to me in
character for Menenius and nothing more than that. I agree Volumnia gives a
consummate acting performance for her son and she is not likely to be much
affected by the final tragedy (we are never told what happens with her, she
disappears after this scene), but I remain unconvinced that Coriolanus is
somehow transformed into a paragon of gentleness and goodness.
Mr Goddard’s theory is most seriously undermined by the fact that
Coriolanus returns, not to his wife and son or even mother, not even to Rome
for that matter, but to the Volsces as “your soldier” (V.6.71). The shattering
scene with his mother, just like his banishment from Rome earlier, doesn’t seem
to have had any marked effect on his character. He remains as proud as a god
among mortals, not to mention more explosive than nitroglycerin. When Aufidius quite
deliberately provokes him with the word “traitor” (V.6.85), he flips his lid
with a vengeance. And this is the end of Coriolanus. Mr Goddard would have us
believe that he all but commits suicide. I don’t buy this at all.
“In all Shakespeare’s tragedies, a principal ingredient is stupidity.
Stupidity indeed is so universal a failing that it should rouse the sympathy of
an audience”.[30] So says G. B. Harrison,
my favourite Shakespearean editor. But I disagree. Unless G. B. H. means stupid
acts proceeding from deeper flaws in the tragic characters. With Coriolanus, it
is pride, anger that stems from it, and, perhaps worst of all, abject submission
to his mother. Othello had his Iago. Coriolanus has his Volumnia.
When all is said and done, is Coriolanus a tragic character? For my part, certainly
not. If Shakespeare intended him to be, to my mind he failed completely. He
loaded the dice heavily against Lear and Antony, even more so against Cleopatra,
but in the end he redeemed all of them. Coriolanus remains, for me, a
cautionary tale about pride, just as Brutus is another one about stupidity.
Neither of them really affected me on a deeper level than that. Will could have
made powerful tragic figures from these Romans, but it seems that he was not
that inspired. He should have followed Plutarch with less invention and more
imagination.
And yet, even though Coriolanus
is among the least popular of Shakespeare’s plays, great actors have generally
loved Coriolanus. An unbroken line of performances can be traced from John
Philip Kemble (1789) to Ralph Fiennes (2000 on the stage, 2011 on the screen). This would include names like Robert Ryan (1954), Ian McKellen (1984), Kenneth
Branagh (1992, “memorable mainly for Judi Dench’s fine Volumnia”), Bruno Ganz (Salzburg,
1993, “an open-space production with a cast of 200”) and even (what a thought!)
Christopher Walken (New York, 1988, “cut version, low-budget and with minimal
staging”). Some were failures, for example Edmund Kean and Henry Irving
(according to whom Coriolanus was “not worth a damn”). Others were sensational.
Laurence Olivier is still remembered for his “ominous growl” on the word
“mildly” in the end of III.2 (Old Vic, 1938) and his portrayal “devastating in
arrogance and irony”, crowned with an overblown death scene in which he
“dangled upside down from a promontory, to be stabbed in the belly to Anthony
Nichol’s eloquent Aufidius” (RSC, 1959).[31]
The last word about Coriolanus is
perhaps best left to G. B. Harrison. [32] For once, I agree more or less completely with his conclusion. Note the
chilling touch in the penultimate sentence:
In Coriolanus the
condemnation outweighs the sympathy. Caius Martius was a fearless soldier, a
superb fighter, but he was also a proud, triple-turned traitor. Volumnia was a
fine specimen of haughty, patrician matron, but the son whom she created was
too like the mother. The Tribunes, according to their lights, were faithful
servants of the people, but they were unscrupulous knaves, and overthrew a
better man than themselves. The result is that at the end we feel not a
catharsis which exalts, but an exasperation which irritates. Nevertheless, as
dramatic writing, as an example of superb technique, characterization, diction
and timing, Coriolanus is as good a
play as Shakespeare ever wrote. If it fails to move us deeply, the reason is
perhaps that the reflection in the mirror is too clear. Deep tragedy needs also
a touch of romantic exaggeration.[33]
[1]
Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (1951), University of Chicago
[2]
William Hazlitt, Characters in Shakespear’s Plays (1817; 2nd ed., 1818), J. M. Dent & Sons
/ E. P. Dutton, 1921, ed. F. J. S., p. 73.
[3] Johnson on Shakespeare, Henry Frowde,
1908, ed. Walter Raleigh, p. 180.
[4]
G. B. Harrison, Shakespeare’s Tragedies
(1951), Routledge, 1966, pp. 203, 226.
[5]
A. C. Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909), Indiana
University
[6] Coleridge’s Essays and Lectures on
Shakespeare & Some Other Old Poets and Dramatists (1907), J. M. Dent
& Sons / E. P. Dutton, 1914, ed. Alfred W. Pollard, p. 97.
[7]
Harold Goddard goes as far as to claim that the play “best represents all
aspects of [Shakespeare’s] genius and preserves the most harmonious balance
among them”, ibid., p. 184. I have come to see more truth in this statement
than I used to.
[8]
See Si Shepard, Actium 31 BC: Downfall of
Antony
[9]
C. T. Winchester, An Old Castle and Other Essays, Macmillan, 1922, p. 64. Mr Winchester’s essay on Antony and Cleopatra is an unjustly
neglected masterpiece. Reportedly, it was the favourite among his lectures on
Shakespeare and dashed off in a single afternoon, or so he told the editor
(ibid., p. vii, note).
[10] Shakespeare’s Plutarch, Duffield /
Chatto & Windus, 1909, vol. 2, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke, pp. 38-39.
[11]
For some of them I am indebted to Cedric Watts and his introduction to the play
in the Wordsworth Classics series (2006, pp. 10-13).
[12]
Harold Goddard, ibid., pp. 198-203.
[13]
Laurence Olivier, On Acting (1986),
Sceptre, 1987, chapter 9, p. 104. Larry evidently wrote, or rather dictated, this
book in a wide range of moods, from goofy adulation of the Bard (“the world's
greatest man”) all the way to extreme irreverence to his characters (Lear is a
“stupid old fart”, Romeo is somebody who “lets an erection rule his life”).
[14]
G. B. Harrison, ibid., p. 219.
[15]
Olivier, ibid.
[16]
Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook
(1949), “1894”.
[17] Shakespeare’s Plutarch, ibid., pp. 88-9, 99-100.
[18]
As regards Brutus’ obstinately underestimating Antony
[19] Harold Goddard, ibid., vol. 1,
p. 307. To be fair to Mr Goddard, his exact words are “If the story of Brutus
is not tragedy, it is hard to know what it is.”
[20] G. B. Harrison, ibid., p. 72.
[21] See note 18.
[22] Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), chapter 6.
[23] Harold Goddard, ibid., p. 322.
[24] G. B. Harrison, ibid., pp. 78-84.
[24] G. B. Harrison, ibid., pp. 78-84.
[26] G. B. Harrison, ibid., p. 228.
[27] Hazlitt, ibid., p. 55.
[28] G. B. Harrison, ibid., pp. 228-9.
[29] Harold Goddard, ibid., pp. 213-24.
[30] G. B. Harrison, ibid., p. 241.
[32] For sure it is not best left to Bernard Shaw who casually calls the play “the greatest of Shakespear’s comedies”, and I suspect he wasn’t joking. See Shaw on Shakespeare (1961), ed. Edwin Wilson, Applause [2002], p. 215.
[33] G. B. Harrison, ibid., pp. 251-2.
