CORIOLANUS
THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP;
OR,
THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED
'Well, march we on
To give obedience where 'tis truly owed:
Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,
And with him, pour we in our country's purge
Each drop of us.
Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign Flower, and drown the weeds' —Macbeth.
'Have you heard the argument?'
CHAPTER I
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM
'Mildly is the word.'
'In a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power in the dust.'
It is the Military Chieftain of ancient Rome who pronounces here the words in which the argument of the Elizabethan revolutionist is so tersely comprehended.
It is the representative of an heroic aristocracy, not one of ancient privilege merely, not one armed with parchments only, claiming descent from heroes; but the yet living leaders of the rabble people to military conquest, and the only leaders who are understood to be able to marshal from their ranks an effective force for military defence.
But this is not all. The scope of the poetic design requires here, under the sheath which this dramatic exhibition of an ancient aristocracy offers it, the impersonation of another and more sovereign difference in men; and this poet has ends to serve, to which a mere historical accuracy in the reproduction of this ancient struggle of state-factions, in an extinct European common-wealth, is of little consequence; though he is not wanting in that either, or indifferent to it, when occasion serves.
From the speeches inserted here and there, we find that this is at the same time an aristocracy of learning which is put upon the stage here, that it is an aristocracy of statesmanship and civil ability, that it is composed of the select men of the state, and not its elect only; that it is the true and natural head of the healthful body politic, and not 'the horn of the monster' only. This is the aristocracy which appears to be in session in the background of this piece at least, and we are not without some occasional glimpses of their proceedings, and this is the element of the poetic combination which comes out in the dialogue, whenever the necessary question of the play requires it.
For it is the collision between the civil interests and the interests which the unlearned heroic ages enthrone, that is coming off here. It is the collision between the government which uneducated masses of men create and confirm, and recreate in any age, and the government which the enlightened man 'in a better hour' demands, which the common sense and sentiment of man, as distinguished from the brute, demands, whether in the one, or the few, or the many. – This is the struggle which is getting into form and order here, – here first. These are the parties to it, and in the reign of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts, they must be content to fight it out on any stage which their time can afford to lease to them for that performance, without being over scrupulous as to the names of the actors, or the historical correctness of the costumes, and other particulars; not minding a little shuffling in the parts, now and then, if it suits their poet's convenience, who has no conscience at all on such points, and who is of the opinion that this is the very stage which an action of such gravity ought to be exhibited on, in the first place; and that a very careful and critical rehearsal of it here, ought to precede the performance elsewhere; though a contrary opinion was not then without its advocates.
It is as the mouth-piece of this intellectual faction in the state, while it is as yet an aristocracy, contending with the physical force of it, struggling for the mastery of it with its numerical majority; it is the Man in the state, the new MAN struggling with the chief which a popular ignorance has endowed with dominion over him; it is the HERO who contends for the majesty of reason and the kingdom of the mind, it is the new speaker, the new, and now at last, commanding speaker for that law, which was old when this myth was named, which was not of yesterday when Antigone quoted it, who speaks now from this Roman's lips, these words of doom, – the reflection on the 'times deceased,' the prophecy of 'things not yet come to life,' the word of new ages.
'In A REBELLION,
When what's not MEET, but what must be, was law,
THEN WERE THEY CHOSEN: in a better hour
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power in the dust.'
Not in the old, sombre, Etruscan streets of ancient Rome, not where the Roman market-place, joined the Capitoline hill and began to ascend it, crossed the road from Palatinus thither, and began to obstruct it, not in the courts and colonnades of the primeval hill of palaces, were the terms of this proposal found. And not from the old logician's chair, was the sweep of their comprehension made; not in any ancient school of rhetoric or logic were they cast and locked in that conjunction. It was another kind of weapon that the old Roman Jove had to take in hand, when amid the din of the Roman forum, he awoke at last from his bronze and marble, to his empirical struggle, his unlearned, experimental struggle with the wolf and her nursling, with his own baptized, red-robed, usurping Mars. It was not with any such subtlety as this, that the struggle of state forces which, under one name or another, sooner or later, in the European states is sure to come, had hitherto been conducted.
And not from the lips of the haughty patrician chief, rising from the dust of ages at the spell of genius, to encounter his old plebeian vanquishers, and fight his long-lost battles o'er again, at a showman's bidding, for a showman's greed – to be stung anew into patrician scorn – to repeat those rattling volleys of the old martial Latin wrath, 'in states unborn' and 'accents then unknown,' for an hour's idle entertainment, for 'a six-pen'orth or shilling's worth' of gaping amusement to a playhouse throng, not – NOT from any such source came that utterance.
It came from the council-table of a sovereignty that was plotting here in secret then the empire that the sun shall not set on; whose beginning only, we have seen. It came from the secret chamber of a new union and society of men, – a union based on a new and, for the first time, scientific acquaintance with the nature that is in men, with the sovereignty that is in all men. It was the Poet of this society who put those words together – the Poet who has heard all its pros and cons, who reports them all, and gives to them all their exact weight in the new balance of his decisions.
Among other things, it was understood in this association, that the power, which was at that time supreme in England, was in fact, though not in name, a popular power, – a power, at least, sustained only by the popular will, though men had not, indeed, as yet, begun to perceive that momentous circumstance, – a power which, being 'but the horn and noise o' the monster,' was able to oppose its 'absolute shall' to the embodied wisdom of the state, – not to its ancient immemorial government only, but to 'its chartered liberties in the body of the weal,' and 'to a graver bench than ever frowned in Greece'; and the Poet has put on his record of debates on those 'questions of gravity,' that were agitating then this secret Chamber of Peers, a distinct demand on the part of this ancient leadership, – the leadership of 'the honoured number,' the honourable and right honourable few, that this mass of ignorance, and stupidity, and blind custom, and incapacity for rule, – this combination of mere instinctive force, which the physical majority in unlearned times constitutes, which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and passivity, and in its passionate admiration of heroism and love of leadership, the ready material of tyranny, shall be annihilated, and cease to have any leadership or voice in the state; and this demand is put by the Poet into the mouth of one who cannot see from his point of observation – with his ineffable contempt for the people – what the Poet sees from his, that the demand, as he puts it, is simply 'the impossible.' For this is a question in the mixed mathematics, and 'the greater part carries it.'
That instinctive, unintelligent force in the state – that blind volcanic force – which foolish states dare to keep pent up within them, is that which the philosopher's eye is intent on also; he, too, has marked this as the primary source of mischief, – he, too, is at war with it, – he, too, would annihilate it; but he has his own mode of warfare for it; he thinks it must be done with Apollo's own darts, if it be done when 'tis done, and not with the military chieftain's weapon.
This work is one in which the question of heroism and nobility is scientifically treated, and in the most rigid manner, 'by line and level,' and through that representative form in which the historical pretence of it is tried, – through that scientific negation, with its merely instinctive, vulgar, unlearned ambition – with its monstrous 'outstretching' on the one hand, and its dwarfish limitations on the other, – through all that finely drawn, historic picture of that which claims the human subjection, the clear scientific lines of the true ideal type are visible, – the outline of the true nobility and government is visible, – towering above that detected insufficiency, into the perfection of the human form, – into the heaven of the true divineness, – into the chair of the perpetual dictatorship, – into the consulship whose year revolves not, whose year is the state.
Neither is this true affirmation here in the form of a scientific abstraction merely. It is not here in the general merely. 'The Instance,' the particular impersonation of nobility and heroism, which this play exhibits, is, indeed, the false heroism and nobility. It is the hitherto uncriticised, and, therefore, uncorrected, popular affirmation on this subject which is embodied here, and this turns out to be, as usual, the clearest scientific negative that could be invented. But in the design, and in all the labour of this piece, – in the steadfast purpose that is always working out that definition, with its so exquisite, but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving it and pointing it with its pen of diamond in the rock for ever, approving itself 'to the Workmaster' only, – in this incessant design, – in this veiled, mysterious authorship, – an historical approximation to the true type of magnanimity and heroism is always present. But there is more in it than this.
It is the old popular notion of heroism which fills the foreground; but the Elizabethan heroism is always lurking behind it, watching its moment, ready to seize it; and under that cover, it contrives to advance and pronounce many words, which, in its own name and form, it could not then have been so prosperously delivered of. Under the disguise of that historical impersonation – under the mask of that old Roman hero, other, quite other, heroic forms – historic forms – not less illustrious, not less memorable, from time to time steal in; and ere we know it, the suppressed Elizabethan men are on the stage, and the Theatre is, indeed, the Globe; and it is shaking and flashing with the iron heel and the thunder of their leadership; and the thrones of oppression are downfalling; and the ages that seemed 'far off,' the ages that were nigh, are there – are there as they are here.
The historical position of the men who could entertain the views which this Play embodies, in the age in which it was written – the whole position of the men in whom this idea of nobility and government was already struggling to become historical – flashes out from that obscure back-ground into the most vivid historical representation, when once the light – 'the great light' which 'the times give to true interpretations' – has been brought to bear upon it. And it does so happen, that that is the light which we are particularly directed to hold up to this particular play, and, what is more, to this particular point in it. 'So our virtues,' says the old Volscian captain, Tullus Aufidius, lamenting the limitations of his historical position, and apologizing for the figure he makes in history —
'So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of THE TIMES.'
['THE TIMES, in many cases, give great light to true interpretations,' says the other, speaking of books, and the method of reading them; but this one applies that suggestion particularly to lives.]
'And power, unto itself most commendable,
Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair
To extol what it hath done.'
The spirit of the Elizabethan heroism is indeed here, and under the cover of this old Roman story; and under cover of those so marked differences in the positions which suffice to detain the unstudious eye, through the medium of that which is common under those differences, the history of the Elizabethan heroism is here also. The spirit of it is here, not in that subtler nature only – that yet, perhaps, subtler, calmer, stronger nature, in which 'blood and judgment were so well co-mingled' – so well, in such new degree and proportion, that their balance made a new force, a new generative force, in history – not in that one only, the one in whom this new historic form is visible and palpable already, but in the haughtier and more unbending historic attitude, at least, of his great 'co-mate and brother in exile.' It is here in the form of the great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with all his strategy, involved in a single-handed contest with the state and its whole physical strength, in his contest with that personal power in whose single arm, in whose miserable finger-joints, the state and all its force then lay. Under that old, threadbare, martial cloak, – under the safe disguise of martial tyranny in 'the few,' – whenever the business of the play requires it, whenever 'his cue comes,' he is there. Under that old, rusty Roman helmet, his smothered speech, his 'speech of fire,' his passionate speech, 'forbid so long,' drops thick and fast, drops unquenched at last, and glows for ever. It is the headless Banquo – 'the blood-boltered Banquo' – that stalks through that shadowy background all unharmed; his Fleance lives, and in him 'Nature's copy is eterne.'
His house of kings, with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in their hands, with two-fold balls and sceptres in their hands – are here filling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of doom; and now he 'smiles,' he smiles upon his baffled foe, 'and points at them for HIS.'
The whole difficulty of this great Elizabethan position, and the moral of it, is most carefully and elaborately exhibited here. No plea at the bar was ever more finely and eloquently laboured. It was for the bar of 'foreign nations and future ages' that this defence was prepared: the speaker who speaks so 'pressly,' is the lawyer; and there is nothing left unsaid at last. But it is not exhibited in words merely. It is acted. It is brought out dramatically. It is presented to the eye as well as to the ear. The impossibility of any other mode of proceeding under those conditions is not demonstrated in this instance by a diagram, drawn on a piece of paper, and handed about among the jury; it is not an exact drawing of the street, and the house, and the corner where the difficulty occurred, with the number of yards and feet put down in ink or pencil marks; it is something much more lively and tangible than that which we have here, under pardon of this old Roman myth.
For the story, as to this element of it, is indeed not new. The story of the struggle of the few with the many, of the one with the many, of the one with 'the many-headed,' is indeed an old one. Back into the days of demi-gods and gods it takes us. It is the story of the celestial Titan, with his benefactions for men, and force and strength, with art to aid them – reluctant art – compelled to serve their ends, enringing his limbs, and driving hard the stakes. Here, indeed, in the Fable, in the proper hero of it, it is the struggle of the 'partliness' of pride and selfish ambition, lifting itself up in the place of God, and arraying itself against the common-weal, as well as the common-will; but the physical relation of the one to the many, the position of the individual who differs from his time on radical questions, the relative strength of the parties to this war, and the weapons and the mode of warfare inevitably prescribed to the minority under such conditions – all this is carefully brought out from the speciality of this instance, and presented in its most general form; and the application of the result to the position of the man who contends for the common-weal, against the selfish will, and passion, and narrowness, and short-sightedness of the multitude, is distinctly made.
Yes, the Elizabethan part is here; that all-unappreciated and odious part, which the great men of the Elizabethan time found forced upon them; that most odious part of all, which, the greatest of his time found forced upon him as the condition of his greatness. It is here already, negatively defined, in this passionate defiance, which rings out at last in the Roman street, when the hero's pride bursts through his resolve, when he breaks down at last in his studied part, and all considerations of policy, all regard to that which was dearer to him than 'his single mould,' is given to the winds in the tempest of his wrath, and he stands at bay, and confronts alone 'the beast with many heads.'
It is thus that he measures the man he contends with, the antagonist who is but 'the horn and noise of the monster': —
'Thou injurious TRIBUNE!
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
In thy hands clenched as many millions, in
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
Thou liest, unto thee, with voice as free
As I do pray the gods.'
But there was a heroism of a finer strain than that at work in England then, imitating the graces of the gods to better purpose; a heroism which must fight a harder field than that, which must fight its own great battles through alone, without acclamations, without spectators; which must come off victorious, and never count its 'cicatrices,' or claim 'the war's garland.'
If we would know the secret of those struggles, those hard conflicts that were going on here then, in whose results all the future ages of mankind were concerned, we must penetrate with this Poet the secret of the Roman patrician's house; we must listen, through that thin poetic barrier, to the great chief himself, the chief of the unborn age of a new civilization – the leader, and hero, and conqueror of the ages of Peace – as he enters and paces his own hall, with the angry fire in his eyes, and utters there the words for which there is no utterance without – as he listens there anew to the argument of that for which he lives, and seeks to reconcile himself anew to that baseness which his time demands of him.
We must seek, here, not the part of him only who endured long and much, but was, at last, provoked into a premature boldness, and involved in a fatal collision with the state, but that of him who endured to the end, who played his life-long part without self-betrayal. We must seek, here, not the part of the great martial chieftain only, but the part of that heroic chief and leader of men and ages, who discovered, in the sixteenth century, when the chivalry of the sword was still exalting its standard of honour as supreme, when the law of the sword was still the world's law, that brute instinct was not the true valour, that there was a better part of it than instinct, though he knows and confesses, – though he is the first to discover, that instinct is a great matter. We must seek, here, the words, the very words of that part which we shall find acted elsewhere, – the part of the chief who was determined, for his part, 'to live and fight another day,' who was not willing to spend _him_self in such conflicts as those in which he saw his most illustrious contemporaries perish at his side, on his right hand and on his left, in the reign of the Tudor, and in the reign of the Stuart. And he has not been at all sparing of his hints on this subject over his own name, for those who have leisure to take them.
'The moral of this fable is,' he says, commenting in a certain place, on the wisdom of the Ancients, 'that men should not be confident of themselves, and imagine that a discovery of their excellences will always render them acceptable. For this can only succeed according to the nature and manners of the person they court or solicit, who, if he be a man not of the same gifts and endowments, but altogether of a haughty and insolent behaviour – (here represented by the person of Juno) —they must entirely drop the character that carries the least show of worth or gracefulness; if they proceed upon any other footing it is downright folly. Nor is it sufficient to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really change themselves, and become abject and contemptible in their persons.' This was a time when abject and contemptible persons could do what others could not do. Large enterprises, new developments of art and science, the most radical social innovations, were undertaken and managed, and very successfully, too, in that age, by persons of that description, though not without frequent glances on their part, at that little, apparently somewhat contradictory circumstance, in their history.
But the fables in which the wisdom of the Moderns, and the secrets of their sages are lodged, are the fables we are unlocking here. Let us listen to these 'secrets of policy' for ourselves, and not take them on trust any longer.
A room in Coriolanus's house.
[Enter Coriolanus and Patricians.]
Cor. Let them pull all about mine ears, present me Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still Be thus to them.
[Under certain conditions that is heroism, no doubt.]
First Patrician. You do the nobler.
[For the question is of NOBILITY.]
Cor. I muse my mother
Does not approve me further.
I talk of you. [To Volumnia.]
Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me
False to my nature? Rather say I play
The man I am.
Vol. O sir, sir, sir,
I would have had you put your power well on
Before you had worn it out.
Lesser had been
The thwarting of your dispositions, if
You had not show'd them how you were disposed,
Ere they lacked power to cross you.
* * * * *
[Enter Menenius and Senators.]
Men. Come, come, you have been too rough
Something too rough;
You must return, and mend it.
1 Sen. There's no remedy,
Unless, by not so doing, our good city
Cleave in the midst and perish.
Vol. Pray be counselled: I have a heart as little apt as yours But yet a brain [hear] that leads my use of anger To better vantage.
Men. Well said, noble woman; Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that The VIOLENT PIT O' THE TIME, craves it as PHYSIC For the WHOLE STATE, I would put mine armour on, Which I can scarcely bear.
[It is the diseased common-weal whose case this Doctor is undertaking. That is our subject.]
Cor. What must I do?
Men. Return to the Tribunes.
Cor. Well, What then? what then?
Men. Repent what you have spoke.
Cor. For them? I can not do it to the gods: Must I then do't to them?
Vol. You are too absolute; Though therein you can never be too noble But when extremities speak. I have heard you say, HONOR and POLICY [hear] like unsevered friends I' the war do grow together: Grant that, and tell me. In peace, what each of them by the other loses That they combine not there?
Cor. Tush; tush!
Men. A good demand.
Vol. If it be honor, in your wars, to seem The same you are not, (which FOR YOUR BEST ENDS You adopt your policy), how is it less, or worse That it shall hold companionship in peace With honor, as in war; since that to both It stands in like request?
Cor. Why force you this? [Truly.]
Vol. Because that now, IT LIES ON YOU to speak To the people, not by your own instruction, Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you to, But with such words that are but rated in Your tongue though but bastards and syllables Of no allowance, to your bosom's truth. Now this no more dishonors you at all, Than to take in a town with gentle words, Which else would put you to your fortune, and THE HAZARD of MUCH BLOOD. – [Hear.] I would dissemble with my nature, where My fortune and my friends at stake required I should do so in honor. I am in this; Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles, And you will rather show our general lowts How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them. For the inheritance of their loves, and safe-guard Of what that want might ruin [hear] NOBLE lady!
Come go with us. Speak fair: you may salve so,
[It is the diseased common-weal we talk of still.]
You may salve so,
Not what is dangerous present, but the loss
Of what is past.
[That was this Doctor's method, who was a Doctor of Laws
as well as Medicine, and very skilful in medicines 'palliative'
as well as 'alterative.']
Vol. I pry'thee now, my son,
Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand,
And thus far having stretched it (here be with them),
Thy knee bussing the stones, for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than the ears– waving thy head,
Which often thus, correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry
That will not hold the handling: or say to them:
Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils,
Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess
Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,
In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame
Thyself forsooth hereafter theirs, so far
As thou hast power and person.
Pry'thee now
Go and be ruled: although I know thou hadst rather
Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf
Than flatter him in a bower. Here is Cominius.
[Enter Cominius.]
Com. I have been i' the market-place, and, sir, 'tis fit
You make STRONG PARTY, or defend yourself
By CALMNESS, or by ABSENCE. ALL's in anger.
Men. Only fair speech.
I think 'twill serve, if he
Can thereto frame his spirit.
Vol. He must, and will.
Pry'thee now say you will and go about it.
Cor. Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce? Must I
With my base tongue, give to my noble heart
A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do't:
Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
This mould of Marcius, they, to dust should grind it,
And throw it against the wind; – to the market-place;
You have put me now to such a part, which never
I shall discharge to the life.
Com. Come, come, we'll prompt you.
Vol. I pry'thee now, sweet son, as thou hast said, My praises made thee first a soldier [ —Volumnia– ], so To have my praise for this, perform a part Than hast not done before.
Cor. Well, I must do't.
Away my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot's spirit! My throat of war be turned,
Which quired with my drum into a pipe!
Small as an eunuch's or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks; and school-boy's tears take up
The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees
Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms. I will not do't,
Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
And by my body's action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.
Vol. At thy choice, then;
To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor
Than thou of them. Come all to ruin; let
Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear
Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death
With as big a heart as thou. Do as thou list.
Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
But owe thy pride thyself.
Cor. Pray be content. Mother I am going to the market place, Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves, Cog their hearts from them, and come back beloved Of all the trades in Rome. – [That he will – ] Look I am going. Commend me to my wife. I'll return Consul [ – That he will – ] Or never trust to what my tongue can do, I' the way of flattery further.
Vol. Do your will. [Exit.]
Com. Away, the tribunes do attend you: arm yourself
To answer mildly; for they are prepared
With accusations as I hear more strong
Than are upon you yet.
Cor. The word is mildly: Pray you let us go,
Let them accuse me by invention, I
Will answer in mine honor.
Men. Ay, but mildly.
Cor. Well, mildly be it then, mildly.
[The Forum. Enter Coriolanus and his party.]
Tribune. Well, here he comes.
Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.
Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece
Will bear the knave by the volume.
The honoured gods
Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of justice
Supplied with WORTHY MEN; plant LOVE among us.
Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the shows of PEACE,
And NOT our STREETS with WAR.
Sen. AMEN! AMEN!
Men. A NOBLE wish.
Thus far the Poet: but the mask through which he speaks is wanted for other purposes, for these occasional auto-biographical glimpses are but the side play of the great historical exhibition which is in progress here, and are introduced in entire subordination to its requisitions.
It is, indeed, an old story into which all this Elizabethan history is crowded. That mimic scene in which the great historic instances in the science of human nature and human life were brought out with such scientific accuracy, and with such matchless artistic power and splendour, was, in fact, what the Poet himself, who ought to know, tells us it is; with so much emphasis, – not merely the mirror of nature in general, but the daguerreotype of the then yet living age, the plate which was able to give to the very body of it, its form and pressure. That is what it was. And what is more, it was the only Mirror, the only Spectator, the only Times, in which the times could get reflected and deliberated on then, with any degree of freedom and vivacity. And yet there were minds here in England then, as acute, as reflective, as able to lead the popular mind as those that compose our leaders and reviews today. There was a mind here then, reflecting not 'ages past' only, but one that had taken its knowledge of the past from the present, that found 'in all men's lives,' a history figuring the nature of the times deceased; prophetic also: and this was the mind of the one who writes 'spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues.'
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