Characters of Shakespear's Plays. By William Hazlitt
CORIOLANUS.
Shakespear has in this play
shewn himself well versed in history and state-affairs. Coriolanus
is a store-house of political common-places. Any one who studies it may save
himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections, or Paine's Rights of Man,
or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our
own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges
of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the
abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a
poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a
leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of
contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the
rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is
also very true, though he dwells less upon it.---The cause of the people is
indeed but little calculated as a subject for poetry: it admits of rhetoric,
which goes into argument and explanation, but it presents no immediate or
distinct images to the mind, "no jutting frieze, buttress, or coigne of
vantage" for poetry "to make its pendant bed and procreant cradle
in." The language of poetry naturally falls in with the language of power.
The imagination is an exaggerating and exclusive faculty: it takes from one
thing to add to another: it accumulates circumstances together to give the
greatest possible effect to a favourite object. The understanding is a dividing
and measuring faculty: it judges of things, not according to their immediate
impression on the mind, but according to their relations to one another. The
one is a monopolizing faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of present
excitement by inequality and disproportion; the other is a distributive
faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate good, by justice and
proportion. The one is an aristocratical, the other a republican faculty. The
principle of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It aims at effect, it
exists by contrast. It admits of no medium. It is every thing by excess. It
rises above the ordinary standard of sufferings and crimes. It presents a
dazzling appearance. It shews its head turretted, crowned, and crested. Its
front is gilt and bloodstained. Before it "it carries noise, and behind it
tears." It has its altars and its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices.
Kings, priests, nobles, are its train-bearers, tyrants and slaves its
executioners.---"Carnage is its daughter." ---Poetry is right-royal.
It puts the individual for the species, the one above the infinite many, might
before right. A lion hunting a flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses is a more
poetical object than they; and we even take part with the lordly beast, because
our vanity or some other feeling makes us disposed to place ourselves in the
situation of the strongest party. So we feel some concern for the poor citizens
of Rome when they meet together to compare their wants and grievances,
till Coriolanus comes in and with blows
and big words drives this set of "poor rats," this rascal scum, to
their homes and beggary before him. There is nothing heroical in a multitude of
miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they are like
to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries and to make
them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our
admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their
pusillanimity. The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity.
The tame submission to usurped authority or even the natural resistance to it
has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a
right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority
with it. We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power
in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: the
one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp,
and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.--- Coriolanus
complains of the fickleness of the people: yet the instant he cannot gratify
his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he turns his arms against his
country. If his country was not worth defending, why did he build his pride on
its defence? He is a conqueror and a hero; he conquers other countries, and
makes this a plea for enslaving his own; and when he is prevented from doing
so, he leagues with its enemies to destroy his country. He rates the people
"as if he were a God to punish, and not a man of their infirmity." He
scoffs at one of their tribunes for maintaining their rights and franchises:
"Mark you his absolute shall?" not marking his own absolute will
to take every thing from them, his impatience of the slightest opposition to
his own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If
the great and powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of Gods, then all this
would have been well: if with a greater knowledge of what is good for the
people, they had as great a care for their interest as they have themselves, if
they were seated above the world, sympathising with the welfare, but not
feeling the passions of men, receiving neither good nor hurt from them, but
bestowing their benefits as free gifts on them, they might then rule over them
like another Providence. But this is not the case. Coriolanus
is unwilling that the senate should shew their "cares" for the
people, lest their "cares" should be construed into
"fears," to the subversion of all due authority; and he is no sooner
disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people not only of the cares of the
state, but of all power to redress themselves, than Volumnia is made madly to
exclaim,
"Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, And occupations perish."
This is but natural: it is but natural for a
mother to have more regard for her son than for a whole city; but then the city
should be left to take some care of itself. The care of the state cannot, we
here see, be safely entrusted to maternal affection, or to the domestic
charities of high life. The great have private feelings of their own, to which
the interests of humanity and justice must courtesy. Their interests are so far
from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and
necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of our
weakness; their riches of our poverty; their pride of our
degradation; their splendour of our wretchedness; their tyranny of our
servitude. If they had the superior knowledge ascribed to them (which they have
not) it would only render them so much more formidable; and from Gods would
convert them into Devils. The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus
is that those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much
shall take all that others have left. The people are poor; therefore they ought
to be starved. They are slaves; therefore they ought to be beaten. They work
hard; therefore they ought to be treated like beasts of burden. They are
ignorant; therefore they ought not to be allowed to feel that they want food,
or clothing, or rest, that they are enslaved, oppressed, and miserable. This is
the logic of the imagination and the passions; which seek to aggrandise what
excites admiration and to heap contempt on misery, to raise power into tyranny,
and to make tyranny absolute; to thrust down that which is
low still lower, and to make wretches desperate: to exalt magistrates into
kings, kings into gods; to degrade subjects to the rank of slaves, and slaves
to the condition of brutes. The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a
tragedy, constructed upon the principles of poetical justice; it is a
noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few, is death to the many,
and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the
weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil. We may
depend upon it that what men delight to read in books, they will put in
practice in reality. One of the most natural traits in this play is the
difference of the interest taken in the success of Coriolanus by his wife and
mother. The one is only anxious for his honour; the other is fearful for his
life.
"Volumnia.
Methinks I hither hear your husband's drum:
I see him pluck Aufidius down by th' hair:
Methinks I see him stamp thus---and call thus---
Come on, ye cowards; ye were got in fear
Though you were born in Rome; his bloody brow
With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes
Like to a harvest man, that's task'd to mow
Or all, or lose his hire.
Virgilia.
His bloody brow! Oh Jupiter, no blood.
Volumnia.
Away, you fool; it more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier
Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood
At Grecian swords contending."
When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her
son's return, she says in the true spirit of a Roman matron,
"These are the ushers of Martius: before him
He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.
Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie,
Which being advanc'd, declines, and then men die."
Coriolanus himself is
a complete character: his love of reputation, his contempt of popular opinion,
his pride and modesty are consequences of each other. His pride consists in the
inflexible sternness of his will: his love of glory is a determined desire to
bear down all opposition, and to extort the admiration both of friends and
foes. His contempt for popular favour, his unwillingness to hear his own
praises, spring from the same source. He cannot contradict the praises that are
bestowed upon him; therefore he is impatient at hearing them. He would enforce
the good opinion of others by his actions, but does not want their
acknowledgments in words.
"Pray now, no more: my mother,
Who has a charter to extol her blood,
When she does praise me, grieves me."
His magnanimity is of the same kind. He admires in an enemy that courage which he honours in himself: he places himself on the hearth of Aufidius with the same confidence that he would have met him in the field, and feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes from him all temptation for using it against him.
In the title-page of Coriolanus, it is said at the bottom of the Dramatis Personę, "The whole history exactly followed, and many of the principal speeches copied from the life of Coriolanus in Plutarch." It will be interesting to our readers to see how far this is the case. Two of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus and Aufidius and between Coriolanus and his mother, are thus given in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, 1579. The first is as follows:---
"It was even twilight when he entered the
city of Antium, and many people met him in the streets, but no man knew him. So
he went directly to Tullus Aufidius' house, and when he came thither, he got
him up straight to the chimney-hearth, and sat him down, and spake not a word
to any man, his face all muffled over. They of the house spying him, wondered
what he should be, and yet they durst not bid him rise. For ill-favouredly
muffled and disguised as he was, yet there appeared a certain majesty in his
countenance and in his silence: whereupon they went to Tullus, who was at
supper, to tell him of the strange disguising
of this man. Tullus rose presently from the board, and coming towards
him, asked him what he was, and wherefore he came. Then Martius unmuffled
himself, and after he had paused awhile, making no answer, he said unto
himself, If thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing me, dost not perhaps
believe me to be the man I am indeed, I must of necessity discover myself to be
that I am. 'I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thyself particularly, and to
all the Volsces generally, great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my
surname of Coriolanus that I bear. For
I never had other benefit nor recompence of the true and painful service I have
done, and the extreme dangers I have been in, but this only surname: a good
memory and witness of the malice and displeasure thou shouldest bear me. Indeed
the name only remaineth with me; for the rest, the envy and cruelty of the
people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobility
and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the people.
This extremity hath now driven me to come as a poor suitor, to take thy
chimney-hearth, not of any hope I have to save my life thereby. For if I had
feared death, I would not have come hither to put myself in hazard: but pricked
forward with desire to be revenged of them that thus have banished me, which
now I do begin, in putting my person into the hands of their enemies. Wherefore
if thou hast any heart to be wrecked of the injuries thy enemies have done
thee, speed thee now, and let my misery serve thy turn, and so use it as my
service may be a benefit to the Volsces: promising thee, that I will fight with
better good will for all you, than I did when I was against you, knowing that
they fight more valiantly who know the force of the enemy, than such as have
never proved it. And if it be so that thou dare not, and that thou art weary to
prove fortune any
more, then am I also weary to live any longer. And it were no wisdom in thee to
save the life of him who hath been heretofore thy mortal enemy, and whose
service now can nothing help, nor pleasure thee.' Tullus hearing what he said,
was a marvellous glad man, and taking him by the hand, he said unto him: 'Stand
up, O Martius, and be of good cheer, for in proffering thyself unto us, thou
doest us great honour: and by this means thou mayest hope also of greater
things at all the Volsces' 'hands.' So he feasted him for that time, and
entertained him in the honourablest manner he could, talking with him of no
other matter at that present: but within few days after, they fell to
consultation together in what sort they should begin their wars."
The meeting between Coriolanus and his mother is also nearly the same as in the play.
"Now was Martius set then in the chair of
state, with all the honours of a general, and when he had spied the women
coming afar off, he marvelled what the matter meant: but afterwards knowing his
wife which came foremost, he determined at the first to persist in his
obstinate and inflexible rancour. But overcome in the end with natural
affection, and being altogether altered to see them, his heart would not serve
him to tarry their coming to his chair, but coming down in haste, he went to
meet them, and first he kissed his mother, and embraced her a pretty while, then
his wife and little children. And nature so wrought with him, that the tears
fell from his eyes, and he could not keep himself from making much of them, but
yielded to the affection of his blood, as if he had been violently carried with
the fury of a most swift-running stream. After he had thus lovingly received
them, and perceiving that his mother Volumnia would begin to speak to him, he
called the chiefest of the council of the Volsces to hear what she would say.
Then she spake in this sort: 'If we held our peace, my son, and determined not
to speak, the state of our poor bodies, and present sight of our raiment, would
easily betray to thee what life we have led at home, since thy exile and abode
abroad; but think now with thyself, how much more unfortunate than all the
women living, we are come hither, considering that the sight which should be
most pleasant to all others to behold, spiteful fortune had made most fearful
to us: making myself to see my son, and my daughter here her husband, besieging
the walls of his native country: so as that which is the only comfort to all
others in their adversity and misery, to pray unto the Gods, and to call to
them for aid, is the only thing which plungeth us into most deep perplexity.
For we cannot, alas, together pray, both for victory to our country, and for
safety of thy life also: but a world of grievous curses, yea more than any
mortal enemy can heap upon us, are forcibly wrapped up in our prayers. For the
bitter sop of most hard choice is offered thy wife and children, to forego one
of the two: either to lose the person of thyself, or the nurse of their native
country. For myself, my son, I am determined not to tarry till fortune in my
lifetime do make an end of this war. For if I cannot persuade the rather to do
good unto both parties, than to overthrow and destroy the one, preferring love
and nature before the malice and calamity of wars, thou shalt see, my son, and
trust unto it, thou shalt no sooner march forward to assault thy country, but
thy foot shall tread upon thy mother's womb, that brought thee first into this
world. And I may not defer to see the day, either that my son be led prisoner
in triumph by his natural countrymen, or that he himself do triumph of them,
and of his natural country. For if it were so, that my request tended to save
thy country, in destroying the Volsces, I must confess, thou wouldest hardly
and doubtfully resolve on that. For as to destroy thy natural country, it is
altogether unmeet and unlawful, so were it not just and less honourable to
betray those that put their trust in thee. But my only demand consisteth, to
make a goal delivery of all evils, which deliverth, equal benefit and safety,
both to the one and the other, but most honourable for the Volsces. For it
shall appear, that having victory in their hands, they have of special favour
granted us singular graces, peace and amity, albeit themselves have no less
part of both than we. Of which good, if so it came to pass, thyself is the only
author, and so hast thou the only honour. But if it fail, and fall out
contrary, thyself alone deservedly shalt carry the shameful reproach and
burthen of either party. So, though the end of war be uncertain, yet this
notwithstanding is most certain, that if it be thy chance to conquer, this benefit
shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest, to be chronicled the plague and
destroyer of thy country. And if fortune overthrow thee, then the world will
say, that through desire to revenge thy private injuries, thou hast for ever
undone thy good friends, who did most lovingly and courteously receive thee.'
Martius gave good ear unto his mother's words, without interrupting her speech
at all, and after she had said what she would, he held his peace a pretty
while, and answered not a word. Hereupon she began again to speak unto him, and
said: 'My son, why dost thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether
to give place unto thy choler and desire of revenge, and thinkest thou it not
honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a cause? Dost thou
take it honourable for a nobleman, to remember the wrongs and injuries done
him, and dost not in like case think it an honest nobleman's part to be
thankful for the goodness that parents do shew to their children, acknowledging
the duty and reverence they ought to bear unto them? No man living is more
bound to shew himself thankful in all parts and respects than thyself; who so
universally shewest all ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken
of thy country, exacting grievous payments upon them, in revenge of the
injuries offered thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto shewed thy poor mother
any courtesy. And therefore it is not only honest, but due unto me, that
without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of thee.
But since by reason I cannot persuade thee to it, to what purpose do I defer my
last hope?' And with these words herself, his wife and children, fell down upon
their knees before him: Martius seeing that, could refrain no longer, but went
straight and lifted her up, crying out, 'Oh mother, what have you done to me?
And holding her hard by the right hand, Oh mother,' said he, you have won a
happy victory for your country, but mortal and unhappy for your son: for I see
myself vanquished by you alone.' These words being spoken openly, he spake a
little apart with his mother and wife, and then let them return again to Rome,
for so they did request him; and so remaining in the camp that night, the next
morning he dislodged, and marched homeward unto the Volsces' country
again."
Shakespear has, in giving a dramatic form to this passage, adhered very closely and properly to the text. He did not think it necessary to improve upon the truth of nature. Several of the scenes in Julius Cęsar, particularly Portia's appeal to the confidence of her husband by shewing him the wound she had given herself, and the appearance of the ghost of Cęsar to Brutus. are, in like manner, taken from the history.