Coriolanus

13. Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
first performed: 1608
format: 384-page Signet Classic, 1966, revised 1988, newly revised 2002
acquired: November read: Feb 20 – Mar 28 time reading: 11:58, 2.4 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: Classic Drama theme Shakespeare
locations: Early Roman Republic
about the author: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

Editors
[[Reuben Brower]] – 1966, 1988, 2002
[[Sylvan Barnet]] – series editor
Source
[[Sir Thomas North]]’s 1579 translation of [[Plutarch]]’s Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus, from [The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans] (c. 120)
Criticism
[[A. C. Bradley]] - Coriolanus : British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, 1912 (printed in [A Miscellany], 1929)
[[Wyndham Lewis]] – from [The Lion and the Fox], show more 1955
[[D. A. Traversi]] – from [An Approach to Shakespeare], 1938
[[Joyce Van Dyke]] - Making a Scene: Language and Gesture in Coriolanus – from Shakespeare Survey 30, 1977
[[Bruce R. Smith]] - Sexual Politics in Coriolanus, 1988
[[S.Schoenbaum]] – Coriolanus on Stage and Screen, 2002

A few quotes from the Signet Classic edition:

- A. C. Bradley (1912):

“perhaps no reader ever called it his favorite play.”

- D. A. Traversi (1938):

“Coriolanus has rarely satisfied the critics. Most of them have found it frigid and have even suggested that Shakespeare’s interest flagged in the writing of it”

- Wyndam Lewis (1955):

“But Coriolanus, as a figure, is of course the super-snob. Of all Shakespeare’s heroes he is the coldest, and the one that Shakespeare himself seems to have felt most coldly towards.”

- Joyce Van Dyke (1988):

“Coriolanus does not have much of a sense of play.”

This was our latest Shakespeare in my Listy group read through is his plays. We're getting to the end, his less popular plays. And the feeling was pretty universal on this one; no one liked it. I found myself rushing through the script to try to finish. But it's not actually a bad play, or one where Shakespeare "flagged". These same Signet-cited critics spend some time breaking down how it's a very carefully written, carefully thought-out script.

The source of this play is 2nd century writer biographer Plutarch. Plutarch's Caius Marcus Coriolanus was a great mythical warrior of the early Roman Republic that was so coarse in personality that no one could stand him in person. He upset his own city so much that he was banished. And he planned his revenge by leading a foreign army to Rome's walls, on the brink of ransacking the city. Rome is saved by his mom, who makes a personal appeal to Coriolanus for mercy, and the unbendable warrior bends, becoming traitor to his own army.

In Shakespeare's hands his story becomes a dry ironic comedy. Coriolanus is a boy warrior, the warrior who never grew up, never learned to feel and empathize, so self-absorbed that he never realized there was anyone else around who was human other than mom. It is, in a way, a psychological study, filled with careful character observation. It's as sophisticated, in this sense, as some of his best plays. It just doesn't seem to really work as a drama. The warriors and their haughty praise of each other are tiring, a bunch of men fawning over stiff imagined narrow greatness. Even the playful homosexual elements can't lighten this one up.

Recommend to resilient completists who really want to check this one off.

2022
https://www.librarything.com/topic/337810#7804273 show less

Like most of Shakespeare's tragedies, this play has it all: blood, war, politics, family drama, betrayal, and just a hint of gay overtones. No seriously it does - I ws just as surprised as you. When I saw the play performed for the first time (the broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse 2014 production) I didn't pick up the hints, but in reading the play there's defrinitely some bromance (if not actual gay love) going on. Coriolanus doesn't say much on the matter - he has a child and seems to be into his wife - but Tullus Aufidius' affection for Coriolanus' soldierly abilities seems to toe the line of actual physical love. And then there's Menenius - a slightly doddering but sweet-talking politician who seems to play into the stereotype of show more the old gay effete. Who knows if Shakespeare ever intended this type of reading, but he is writing about Ancient Rome, where homosexuality was more accepted. Or maybe our minds are all in the gutter (haha). show less

A rare misfire, for me, when it comes to the work of William Shakespeare. Coriolanus seems primed for great tragic drama: a victorious Roman general ventures into the murky business of politics, where his blunt military manner and his arrogant pride don't do him any favours when it comes to forming alliances with senators, tribunes or the Roman plebs. So wounded is he by this rejection that he instead forms an alliance with Rome's enemy, the Volsces, and as a turncoat leads their bannermen to the gates of Rome. There is meat here for those who want to ponder the role of soldiers in a civic society, the benefits and drawbacks of political manoeuvring versus principled bluntness, or how a historical figure can be variously painted as a show more hero on the battlefield and a tyrant in the polls. "So our virtues Lie in th'interpretation of the time," Coriolanus' rival Tullus Aufidius says at the end of Act Four (pg. 275).

The problem was that it was hard to source any of this in the reading of Coriolanus; this is one of those unfortunate plays that can only really be appreciated if you're willing to delve into the scholarly analysis. In this, I was further hampered by the impenetrable introduction to my Arden edition of the play, but the play itself lacks the dynamism to really engage the reader. Coriolanus lacks the political intrigue of Julius Caesar and, with the titular general the only compelling character, we don't see his downfall delivered with the same dramatic blows that we do with the similar tragedy in Macbeth. Coriolanus himself remains at arm's length to the reader, with no soliloquy or signature scene to serve as insight into the character. There are whispers of dramatic potency – like Coriolanus' inevitable retort about the fluttering Volscians in Act Five, which condemns him (pg. 308) – but for the most part the play is a well-serviced mechanism, with nothing in its circular, patiently-turning gears to really excite the reader. show less

This particular play has probably got better since it was produced, if by "get better" we mean "become more thematically relevant." It may be set in Rome and superficially be a story about plebs and patricians, the Achillean hero and the swathe he cuts, but I don't think anyone who reads this in 2012 will fail to see it as a tragedy of the meritocracy. Caius Marcius doesn't inherit his place--he earns it at the gates of Corioles, and the nub of the play is the most sacrosanct dictum of the past decade, the breaking point of the present moment--that a society in which the cream can rise to the top, even if we grant that it is truly possible, is healthy.

The subject, in other words, is "greatness," and what constitutes it, and whether it show more can be harnessed. In Coriolanus, we see the pure neoliberal animal: "Me! My virtue! My reputation!" Not, certainly, "My bank account!", as he punishes the Roman looters, but it soon becomes evident to him that there is only one place further prestige can be got once he's conquered the battlefield, and that is in the arena of political power. Wealth and the esteem of your fellows and the ability to control them--all infinitely exchangeable currency in the end.

The reason the meritocracy is slippery and adaptable is that achievement of power always depends on convincing other people you are more deserving of it than them, and so this is also a play about class--the myth of social mobility in a society where Tullus Aufidius was as born to be second-best as the bamboozled, slow-on-the-uptake, almost self-loathing plebs were to be ruled. After they acclaim Coriolanus, their ostensible champions Brutus and Sicinius reveal themselves as more exploiters--only clumsy ones, unlike the coy powermonger Marcius--where they openly chide them for making the wrong decision, he refuses to show them his wounds, and they love him despite themselves. This is one way in which we've evolved--now a showing of wounds, a telling of one's battles with depression or alcohol or sex addiction, is mandatory. Or from another angle: It is Coriolanus's words, not his promises of friendship, that make him consul; cf. George W. Bush, the president you'd most want to have a beer with.* Then as now, it's good enough for people to hear about the wounds, or the WMDs: nobody's actually gonna check up.

There are elements of Coriolanus the celebrity or the political darling, clearly, but ultimately these arenas aren't dog-eat-dog enough for this symbol of the human need to rise, the man as temple to his own talent--so he reveals himself in his final form, the corporate titan. Rome won't pay you enough? Let's have no nationalist ecstasies--sign on with the corporate rival in Antium and stage a hostile takeover using your inside knowledge. This moment, incidentally, is also the first in which we get a sense that Tullus is more than just a second-rate Coriolanus--when he signs the Roman on, he is operating by the rules of the game, no doubt, but he also seems to really trust Coriolanus--to be capable of bonds of disinterested friendship.

This in contrast to Coriolanus--he is determined to build a better bloodbath, and sends his friend Memenius packing when the latter suggests that the lives of thousands might be worth more than his own legend. This is it right here--it's not even about making a profit; but I would argue that it's not really that for us either, not for the people at the top: it's about winning, and money is just our current way of keeping score. Coriolanus lives in a time where meritocracy is muddled by dynasties and vague ideas about blood and destiny and divinity, and it's these that Volumnia plays on when she convinces him not to sack Rome. It's the first sign of weakness in him, of Achillean, atavistic and self-regard, perhaps somewhat like unto staying a quant, keeping one's talent and craft pure, instead of taking that CEO job and crushing senators (ancient Rome indeed!) under your feet.

But as the "regions do smilingly revolt," blooded with the scent of the hero's slight humanity, the play's secret revolutionary hero reveals himself: Tullus has Coriolanus killed in a particularly vicious and cowardly way, covering himself in unfame. In doing so, again, he no doubt expresses the sincere envy and rage of the passed-over applicant, the sore loser. But he also evokes the widows and orphans of the Volsces, which Marcius never does except in a speculative and sort of perplexed way; he eliminates the enemy of the people, and that triumph of mediocrity is manifestly morally right. Coriolanus may die like a boss, but with cowards in charge, I bet we'd have fewer mores and better healthcare.

*and, like, really? Who the fuck are these people? A tragic play could be written about that survey alone. show less

The citizens of a republic run their greatest soldier out of town because they can't stand him and he can't stand them. As it happens, they can't live without each other - literally. This may be the greatest political drama written. It is also one of the great mother and son stories.

This is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays with its undercurrents of hypocrisy and irony. Coriolanus is not likable; he looks down at the ordinary and has very stern views about charity but how the play unfolds had me gripped right to the end.

Several years ago I read this play as part of a class at the University of Chicago. It was a revelation that entranced me with its drama. Even so, the warrior Coriolanus is perhaps the most opaque of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, rarely pausing to soliloquise or reveal the motives behind his prideful isolation from Roman society. Instead, the play demonstrates his character through his actions and his relationships. The relationship with his mother, Volumnia, is the most important of these. The tension of her love for him reaches heights that are only exceeded by those of Coriolanus fame as a warrior for Rome.
This is not the Rome of the Caesars but that of the early days when the republic was in its formative stages. It was a city show more concerned with warring neighbors like the Volscians who are an ever-present enemy. While Caius Martius' success in battles with this enemy lead him to military honors and earn him the name Coriolanus, he does not have the temperamental qualities that would allow him use these accolades for political purposes. He is held back by his own nature and his situation leads to banishment by the crowds who once cheered him. His speech to them as he leaves Rome is memorable:
"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere."(Act III, Scene iii)

It is, for me, the best of the lesser-known of his plays and stands tall by the side of the other two great Roman history plays, Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra. In particular, the psychological depth of the character of Coriolanus, his relationships with his mother and subject Romans, and the dramatic action make this play a delight to read. show less