Part 16 (1/2)

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?”

are among the most beautiful things ever written by man.

_Coriola.n.u.s._

_Written._ 1608 (?)

_Published._ 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The life of Coriola.n.u.s in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's _Lives_.

_The Fable._ Marcius, a n.o.ble Roman, of an excessive pride, bitterly opposes the rabble.

In the war against the Volscians he bears himself so n.o.bly that he wins the t.i.tle of Coriola.n.u.s. On his return from the wars he seeks the Consuls.h.i.+p, woos the voices of the mult.i.tude, is accepted, and then cast by them. For his angry comment on their behaviour the tribunes contrive his banishment from the city.

Being banished, he makes league with the Volscians. He takes command in the Volscian army and invades Roman territory.

Coming as a conqueror to the walls of Rome, his mother and wife persuade him to spare the city. He causes the Volscians to make peace. The Volscians return home dissatisfied.

On his return to the Volscian territory Coriola.n.u.s is impeached as a traitor, and stabbed to death by conspirators.

Shakespeare's tragical characters are all destroyed by the excess of some trait in them, whether good or ill matters nothing. Nature cares for type, not for the excessive. Sooner or later she checks the excessive so that the type may be maintained. She is stronger than the excessive, though she may be baser. To Nature, progress, though it be infinitesimal, must be a progress of the whole ma.s.s, not a sudden darting out of one quality or one member.

Timon of Athens is betrayed by an excessive generosity. Coriola.n.u.s is betrayed by an excessive contempt for the mult.i.tude. He is one born into a high tradition of life. He has the courage, the skill in arms, and the talent for affairs that come with high birth in the manly races. He has also the faith in tradition that makes an unlettered upper cla.s.s narrow and obstructionist. Like the rich in France before the Revolution, he despises the poor. He denies them the right to complain of their hunger.

Rather than grant them that right, or the means of urging redress, he would take a short way with them, as was practised here, at Manchester and elsewhere.

”Would the n.o.bility lay aside their ruth, And let me use my sword, I'ld make a quarry With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high As I could pick my lance.”

Like all conservative, aristocratic men, he sees in the first granting of political power to the people the beginning of revolution.

”It will in time Win power upon and throw forth greater themes For insurrection's arguing.”

He regards the people as a necessary, evil-smelling, many-headed beast, good enough, under the leaders.h.i.+p of men like himself, to make inferior troops to be spent as the State pleases. It is possible that Napoleon and Bismarck looked upon the mob with similar scorn. The ideas are those of an absolute monarch or super-man. The country squire holds those ideas, though want of power and want of intellect combine to keep him from applying them. The sincerity of the ideas is tested from time to time, in free countries, by general elections.

Much of the pride of Coriola.n.u.s springs from a sense of his superiority to others in the gifts of fortune. Much of it comes from the knowledge that he is superior in himself. Leading, as becomes his birth, in the war against the Volscians he shows himself so much superior to others that the campaign is his triumph. He is ”the man” whom Napoleon counted ”everything in war.” The knowledge of his merit is so bright within himself that he is unable to see that it is less bright in others. He is willing to become the head of the State if the post may be given to him as a right due to merit, not as a favour begged. He has no l.u.s.t for power. But knowing himself to be the best man in Rome, he thinks that his merit is sufficiently great to excuse him from the indignity of sueing for it. The laws of free countries prescribe that he who wishes to be elected must appeal to the electors whether he love them or loathe them. Instead of appealing to them, Coriola.n.u.s insults them with such arrogance that they drive him from the city.

He fails as a traitor, because he is too n.o.ble to be fiercely revengeful. A lesser man, a Richard III, or an Iago, would have exacted a b.l.o.o.d.y toll from Rome. Coriola.n.u.s cannot bring himself to be stern, in the presence of his old mother and his wife. Something generous and truly aristocratic in him makes him a second time a traitor, this time to his hosts the Volscians. He spares Rome by the sacrifice of those who have given him a shelter and a welcome. Treachery (even from a n.o.ble motive) is never forgiven in these plays. It is always avenged, seldom mercifully. The Volscians avenge themselves on Coriola.n.u.s by an act of treachery that brings the n.o.ble heart under the foot of the traitor.

_Coriola.n.u.s_ is one of the greatest of Shakespeare's creations. Much of the glory of the creation is due to Plutarch. There can be no great art without great fable. Great art can only exist where great men brood intensely on something upon which all men brood a little. Without a popular body of fable there can be no unselfish art in any country.

Shakespeare's art was selfish till he turned to the great tales in the four most popular books of his time, Holinshed, North's Plutarch, Cinthio, and De Belleforest. Since the newspaper became powerful, topic has supplanted fable, and subject comes to the artist untrimmed and unlit by the vitality of many minds. In reading _Coriola.n.u.s_ and the other plays of the great period a man feels that Shakespeare fed his fire with all that was pa.s.sionate in the thought about him. He appears to be his age focussed. The great man now stands outside his age, like Timon.

_Coriola.n.u.s_ is a play of the clash of the aristocratic temper with the world. It contains most of the few speeches in Shakespeare which ring with what seems like a personal bitterness. Hatred of the flunkey mind, and of the servile, insolent mob mind, ”false as water,” appears in half-a-dozen pa.s.sages. Some of these pa.s.sages are ironic inventions, not prompted by Plutarch. The great mind, brooding on the many forms of treachery, found nothing more treacherous than the mob, and nothing more dog-like, for good or evil, than the servant.

Greatness is sometimes shown in very little things. Few things in Shakespeare show better the fulness of his happy power than the following--

(_Corioli. Enter certain Romans with spoils._)

_1st Roman._ This will I carry to Rome.

_2nd Roman._ And I this.