Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  It was a narrow, constricted, miserable way of life that won the Spartans many victories and therefore gained them much praise by those who valued victories for themselves and who did not have to live in Sparta at the time. It cost Sparta everything else but military victory, and in the end the narrow and inflexible outlook it gave them cost them victory as well.

  Nevertheless, Lycurgus remained as the byword for the statesman and lawgiver.

  Menenius grows wordier and more articulate with each speech as the tribunes become more and more beaten down. Finally, he makes the direct comparison:

  Yet you must be saying Marcius is proud;

  who, in a cheap estimation,

  is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 92-94

  Deucalion was the sole male survivor of a great flood in the Greek legends (see page I-164) and from him all later men were considered to be descended.

  … in Galen. ..

  But now the three women enter-Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria-with news that Marcius is returning in victory. They have letters and there is one for Menenius.

  The voluble old man is so elated at the news, and especially at the grand tale that there is a letter for him, that he throws his cap in the air and declares it is the best medicine he could have. He says:

  The most sovereign prescription

  in Galen is but empiricutic [quackish],

  and, to this preservative,

  of no better report than a horse-drench.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 119-21

  This is an even more amusing anachronism than the reference to Cato. Galen was a Greek physician who practiced in Rome and whose books, throughout the Middle Ages and into early modern times, were considered the last word in medical theory and practice. The only trouble is that he was at the height of his career about a.d. 180, nearly seven centuries after the time of Menenius.

  … the repulse of Tarquin.. .

  Menenius and Volumnia now engage in a grisly counting of wounds and scars on Marcius' body. Volumnia says:

  He received in the repulse

  of Tarquin seven hurts i'th'body.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 154-55

  After the eviction of Tarquin (see page I-211), the ex-King made several attempts to regain power, first with the aid of the Etruscans and then with the aid of other Latin cities. He was defeated at each attempt, the final battle coming at Lake Regillus in 496 b.c., only two years before the date of the opening scene of Coriolanus.

  I warrant him consul

  Coriolanus himself comes now, and his new title is announced to the entire city. He kneels first of all to his mother, and only after her reminder does he address his wife. The city is wild over him and it is clear he can receive whatever honor or office it can bestow on him. Volumnia states, with satisfaction, what is in many minds:

  Only

  There's one thing wanting, which I doubt not but

  Our Rome will cast upon thee.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 206-8

  It is the consulship itself obviously, and Volumnia, as usual, continues to guide her son toward the heights.

  The two tribunes are also aware of the waiting consulship, and they are worried. Sicinius says:

  On the sudden,

  I warrant him consul.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 227-28

  From their standpoint, nothing could be worse. Coriolanus' reactionary beliefs are well known. He would have killed the plebeians rather than compromise with them in the matter of tribunes. As a willful and determined consul, he might cancel that compromise. As Brutus says:

  Then our office may,

  During his power, go sleep.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 228-29

  Their only hope is that Coriolanus, through his own pride, will ruin his own chances.

  At sixteen years

  We move swiftly to the Capitol, the seat of the government, where the people are gathered to elect the new consuls, of whom Coriolanus is odds-on favorite to be one.

  However, to achieve the goal, Coriolanus must get the vote of the people, and the way in which this was done was to flatter and cajole them, very much as in our own time. In early Roman times, it was customary for a candidate for the consulate to dress humbly, speak softly, and show the scars won in battle. He did so in an unadorned white toga (hence our word "candidate," from the Latin word for "dressed in white").

  The routine begins with the equivalent of a nominating speech from Cominius, the then-consul, and it sounds very much (allowing for changes in times and manners) like a nominating speech one might make today. Cominius begins:

  At sixteen years,

  When Tarquin made a head for Rome,

  he fought Beyond the mark of others.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 88-90

  If we allow Tarquin's earliest battle to regain Rome to have been in 509 b.c. and if Coriolanus was sixteen then, we can say he was born in 525 b.c. and was thirty-two years old at the taking of Corioli. If the reference is to one of Tarquin's later attempts, then Coriolanus was younger than thirty-two.

  Be taken from the people

  The eloquent summary by Cominius of a career of heroic battling wins over the patricians and Menenius says it remains only to speak to the people. Coriolanus demurs rather churlishly, and the tribunes, seeing their chance, at once demand that the candidate live up to the letter of the custom.

  Coriolanus has this to say of the custom:

  It is a part

  That 1 shall blush in acting, and might well

  Be taken from the people.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 145-47

  The tribunes could ask no better attitude than that. To say baldly that he wishes to take privileges from the people is absolutely no way to get their vote, and the tribunes rush away to see to it that the plebeians are made aware of Coriolanus' attitude.

  … ask it kindly

  Coriolanus does put on the uniform of humility, grumbling fiercely at every stage of the game and keeping poor Menenius in a sweat, for the old man is working overtime to keep him quiet and respectful just long enough.

  Coriolanus cannot be so. Try as he might, he ends by being contemptuous as the voting citizens approach. He asks one of them:

  Well then, I pray,

  your price o'th'consulship?

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 77-78

  To which the citizen makes a most reasonable reply, giving the price of anything requested, however deserving it may be:

  The price is, to ask it kindly.

  —Act II, scene iii, line 79

  And that is precisely what Coriolanus, thanks to his mother's teachings, cannot do.

  … in free contempt

  Almost creaking in the attempt, Coriolanus manages to bend an absolute minimum so that he might make it seem, to inquiring citizens, that he does indeed "ask it kindly." That, combined with his great reputation of the moment, lures the people into promising to vote for him.

  It is only afterward, by comparing notes, that they realize his bending was more seeming than actual and that he did not, for instance, actually show his scars to anyone. (This too sounds like modesty, but it can be interpreted as the result of arrogance. He will not stoop to win the approval of anyone. He wants it as his right and without question.)

  The tribunes are disgusted that the plebeians have been so easily fooled, and Brutus demands impatiently:

  Did you perceive

  He did solicit you in free contempt

  When he did need your loves; and do you think

  That his contempt shall not be bruising to you

  When he hath power to crush?

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 205-9

  The plebeians, seeing the good sense in this, veer about and decide to withdraw their approval while there is still time and the official vote has not yet been taken.

  (Plutarch says that Coriolanus actually showed his scars and won their favor more fairly. It
was only when, on the actual voting day, he showed up with an escort of patricians, in all his pomp and pride, that the plebeians turned from him. Shakespeare's modification fits better the personality the dramatist has decided to portray.)

  … Numa's daughter's son

  The plebeians are rather embarrassed at having to reverse their votes and the tribunes offer to take the blame. They say the plebeians might claim to have been against Coriolanus all along but that the tribunes had talked them into favoring him. Now, in turning against him, they had merely shaken off the tribunes' propaganda.

  This seems awfully poor. The tribunes were the very spearhead of the antipaitrician and, in particular, anti-Coriolanus, movement. Could the patricians for a moment believe that they had spoken in favor of Coriolanus? Or was Shakespeare merely seizing the opportunity to insert a passage from Plutarch that would lend another bit of historical authenticity to the play?

  He has Brutus tell them all the wonderful things the tribunes would have said about Coriolanus in persuading the plebeians to vote for him:

  The noble house o'th'Marcians, from whence came

  That Ancus Marcius, Numa's daughter's son,

  Who after great Hostilius here was king;

  Of the same house Publius and Quintus were

  That our best water brought by conduits hither;

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 244-48

  This is straight out of North's translation of Plutarch, almost word for word.

  The Numa referred to is Numa Pompilius, who reigned as second king of Rome, coming to the throne, according to legend, in 716 b.c., after the death of Romulus, Rome's founder. He was a mild and exemplary king, upon whom Roman legend fixed the founding of Roman religion. There was peace in his reign and he was always looked back to as an ideal ruler.

  He reigned till 673 b.c. and was followed by Tullus Hostilius, who ruled till 641 b.c. and who is also mentioned in this passage.

  Following Hostilius, the throne was voted to Ancus Marcius, who, as the passage states, was a grandson of Numa on his mother's side. Thus, Coriolanus was descended from two of Rome's seven kings.

  So much is legendary. The next is probably anachronistic. The city of Rome, in its great days, had its water supplied through aqueducts. No other city of ancient or medieval times had such an elaborate water system. In fact, Rome had a better water system than Shakespeare's London did. Naturally, writers of both ancient and later times tended to be awed by Rome's aqueducts and, if anything, to overemphasize them.

  The Rome of Coriolanus' day was still a small town, quite rude and uncivilized. It certainly had no elaborate aqueducts, but relied on wells and on the Tiber River. The first important aqueducts to be built were constructed in 312 b.c., nearly two centuries after Coriolanus' time.

  And Censorinus…

  Brutus continues listing Coriolanus' ancestors:

  And Censorinus that was so surnamed

  And nobly named so, twice being censor,

  Was his great ancestor.

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 244-51

  It is very unlikely that Censorinus could have existed. He too must be an anachronism born of the deliberate putting back of Roman customs into the legendary days before the Gallic sack. In Coriolanus' time, there had scarcely been time for one man to serve as censor twice, especially since the office was not founded till 443 b.c., half a century after the events in this play.

  … to Antium

  While waiting for the vote, Coriolanus discusses foreign affairs with the other soldiers, Cominius and Titus Lartius. The Volscians, while defeated, have not been crushed, and Tullus Aufidius, their great champion, still lives. Titus Lartius had seen him under a safe-conduct and says:

  On safeguard he came to me; and did curse

  Against the Volsces, for they had so vilely

  Yielded the town. He is retired to Antium.

  —Act III, scene i, lines 9-11

  Antium is a coastal Latin town, thirty-three miles south of Rome. (That is the measure of Rome's as yet infant state, that its chief enemies, even after a retreat, were yet little more than thirty miles away.)

  Antium's original fame was as a Volscian stronghold, as it is in this play, and it was not made fully subject to Rome till 341 b.c., a century and a half after Coriolanus' time. In the days of Rome's greatness, it was a favorite seaside resort of wealthy Romans. The Emperor Nero was born there and built a magnificent villa there.

  The modern Italian version of its name is Anzio and under that name it gained a grisly, if fleeting, notoriety during World War II. An Allied amphibious force landed there on January 22, 1944, forming the Anzio bridgehead. It was hoped that this would link up quickly with other forces advancing up the Italian peninsula, but strong German resistance kept the bridgehead bloodily in being for four months, the linkage with the main Allied forces not taking place till May 25.

  … this Triton …

  As Coriolanus and his friends move on to the Senate, they are stopped by the tribunes and get the astonishing news that Coriolanus, who thought he had clinched the vote, is in disfavor with the plebeians after all and is to be denied the consulship. The tribunes make no effort to soften the blow and present the matter arrogantly in the hope that Coriolanus will burst into a rage and harm his own cause further.

  He does. Rather than attempt to placate the tribunes, he plainly states his extreme rightist position concerning the plebeians.

  Then, when the tribune Sicinius orders the raging Coriolanus to remain where he is and peremptorily forbids him to advance toward the Capitol, Coriolanus repeats Sicinius' words with the utter scorn of the born patrician for someone he views as a lowborn rascal. He says:

  Shall remain!

  Hear you this Triton of the minnows?

  Mark you His absolute "shall"?

  —Act HI, scene i, lines 88-90

  Triton was a son of Neptune (Poseidon) in the Greek myths and was pictured as a merman-fish from the waist down. He was usually depicted as blowing a blast on a large sea shell, a blast that might either rouse the winds or calm the sea. In either case, he controlled the waves. Thus, the tribune was being mocked as one who controlled a herd of insignificant rabble and thought he was powerful in consequence. He was a Triton, but of nothing but minnows.

  … Hydra here…

  Coriolanus turns on the patricians as well, for he maintains that they have given rise to this trouble by foolishly appeasing the plebeians and granting them rights instead of beating them down by force. He says:

  You grave but reckless senators, have you thus

  Given Hydra here to choose an officer,

  —Act III, scene i, lines 92-93

  The Hydra was a monster that was killed by Hercules as his second labor (see page I-24). It was pictured as a huge sea creature with a dog-like body and eight or nine heads, one of which was immortal. (The picture may have arisen as an improvement on the eight-tentacled octopus.)

  Later mythmakers improved matters by giving the Hydra fifty heads, or one hundred, or even ten thousand. Furthermore, as each head was cut off, two new ones grew into place instantly. Again, the creature was pictured as so poisonous its very odor could kill, and so on.

  Hercules managed anyway. Each tune he cut off a head, he had an assistant sear the stump with fire to prevent new growths. The immortal head he buried under a huge rock and thus, finally, the monster was killed.

  But this made the Hydra a byword for anything with many heads, or anything which reappeared when dispatched. An intricate social difficulty, which bobs up again after each effort made to cure matters, is "Hydra-headed," and in our own times it would seem that all social problems are of this nature.

  Again, the word may well be applied to a mob and it is this metaphor that is being used by Coriolanus. The decision as to the choice of consul has been handed over to the many-headed multitude.

  The aediles. ..

  Coriolanus continues in this way, in overwhelming rage, despite all attempts by Menenius
and other patricians with common sense to stop him.

  Finally, he threatens to take away the plebeians' political gains by force. Now the tribunes have all they want. Not only has Coriolanus lost any possible chance of gaining the plebeian vote; he has committed actual treason by advocating unconstitutional methods of procedure. Brutus cries out:

  The aediles, ho!

  Let him be apprehended.

  —Act III, scene i, lines 171-72

  The aediles were plebeian officials who had come into existence at the same time the tribunes had. They had a number of responsibilities in their time. They were in charge of the streets, of the distribution of grain, of the public celebrations. Here they appear in their role as protectors of the tribunes; officers empowered to arrest those who threatened the tribunal safety.

  … to th'rock Tarpeian…

  Naturally, Coriolanus is not going to submit tamely to arrest; nor, for that matter, are the patricians ready to see him arrested. The aediles can do nothing by themselves, but in a moment the stage swarms with plebeians coming to the aid of their tribunes. A full-fledged riot is in progress, despite everything Menenius can do to try to calm matters.