by John Osborne
CAIUS MARCIUS: No. You’re right. Not for the while. (He pats her hair and goes to the window) Does the light disturb you?
(She makes no answer but her heavy breathing returns soon.)
I’ll close this bit of curtain…
(He sits at a table and switches on a tiny light which serves to isolate his wife in more darkness. Taking out a notebook, he writes in an unsure hand.)
Concentration difficult. More so today. Woke suddenly. Foot almost through the sheet. Today more difficult… sure to. Senate…people…crowds. Tribunes and all of that! No chance of waking her again… A few more hours… And years, not years. Surely. Things in flight on first waking… Flying blind. Blind flying. No pilot beside. Just as well… Decisions impossible. But forced ones. Elephants of decisions. Over-weighted. Jostled… Crowds… Hold back… But how? (To VIRGILIA) Am I disturbing you?
(No answer.)
Mind racing but no engine. Body concentrates, then flies off. Women. Thoughts of women. All of them. More all the time. Can’t write, die to write…dictate… Sex flickers, no flame. What to even consider. To do. Coherent? No. Speech even surprisingly blurred. Early. But Senate. Crowds. Hold back. And not just by morning. No, not later…later. Tears far too close, close too hard. At bedside. Rising After Rising Use After Tears! Absurdities, lying aware. By the bath. Locked in. One hour. Half. Twenty minutes. Six. Don’t. No further. Don’t get light. No light. Bother? Rightly? Power without storage. Eaten little. Four, no, what, five days. Up. Thrown up. Slime, squalid slime on beard and towels. Mustn’t let it be shown. Laundry. They know. No. They – don’t. Bath. Dread the water. Teeth unclean but nothing will trick them up. Mustn’t. Bed. Got an hour. No. Fifty minutes… Drank that much. Did I? No. Yes… No. What action? Action? Just spectacle. Bombast… Wrote to my mother. Wrote? I made marks. Perhaps she will die? No. She won’t. She’s young. Younger than I. That’s for certain.
VIRGILIA: Come back to bed.
CAIUS MARCIUS: Coming.
VIRGILIA: Do you want to talk?
CAIUS MARCIUS: No.
VIRGILIA: Eat?
CAIUS MARCIUS: No. But thank you.
VIRGILIA: (Returning to supine position) You must be tired.
CAIUS MARCIUS: Yes.
VIRGILIA: I am.
(He starts getting back to bed, turning off the lamp and so on.)
CAIUS MARCIUS: You must be. (Hums.)
The working class
Can kiss my arse.
And keep the Red
Rag flying high.
(He settles into bed.)
VIRGILIA (Drowsy.) Why are you singing?
CAIUS MARCIUS: I’m not. With words is…
VIRGILIA: What?
CAIUS MARCIUS: Words is that they, that is, people, expect them to mean either what they say, don’t say, or may say…
VIRGILIA: People?
CAIUS MARCIUS: The people. Goodnight.
VIRGILIA: Good morning… Cuddle…
(Soon there is the sound only of her breath. CAIUS MARCIUS lies in the darkness, then puts on a gown and goes out, leaving the soft sound and darkness.)
Scene 2
Rome. A street. Light flashes on, dazzling after first scene. The Roman MOB enters. Also police and some troops, discreetly dressed. Note: mob scenes, demonstrations and so on are obviously up to the director’s resources, lack of them, taste, inclination, disinclination or lack of it. However, after the dawn unease of the preceding scene, I would suggest something of the following as a pattern for the similar scenes in the play: a cross-section MOB of students, fixers, pushers, policemen, unidentifiable public, obvious trade unionists, journalists and the odd news camera team, sound men, etc., shrills of police horses, linked arms on all sides; screaming girls, banners of the nineteenth-century sort, banners of the modern kind– ‘Caius Marcius: Go Fuck Yourself; ‘We Want A Lay Not Delay’; ‘One Quarter Owns Threequarters’; ‘No More Trix Just A Fix’; the head of a pig with ‘Caius Marcius’ inscribed on it; ‘Caius Marcius is The Berk – let Him Go And Do The Work – ’; Roman troops can be in flak jackets and helmets. Patricians like MPs or high-ranking officers. The Volscians more revolutionary in appearance but still often martial, with berets and insignia, etc. When the Roman MOB enters, it can be chanting for example: AU-FID-IUS.
MOB: AUFIDIUS – AU-FID-IUS – AU-FID-IUS!
(Laughter, jeers. A flag is burnt centre stage and waved aloft. Banners wave, stones, marbles thrown. Hand-clapping; cheers. A pop group possibly joins in for a while. The chaos and noise is eventually brought under the partial control of the FIRST CITIZEN)
FIRST CITIZEN: Hear me! Will you listen to me!
MOB: Go on then. (Etc.)
FIRST CITIZEN: We are all, all of us resolved, determined –
VOICE: Get on with it!
FIRST CITIZEN: To die, yes, if we have to, rather than put up with this state of things.
VOICE: What state of things?
FIRST CITIZEN: What state of things he says!
VOICE: Caius Marcius!
(Roar)
FIRST CITIZEN: Is that not ‘state of things’ enough for you?
VOICE: More than enough, if you ask me!
MOB: CAIUS MARCIUS OUT! MARCIUS OUT! OUT! OUT! MARCIUS OUT!
FIRST CITIZEN: Then what’s the answer!
VOICE: We know the answer all right.
FIRST CITIZEN: Haven’t we got teeth then?
VOICE: Yours look as if you’d got ‘em for nothing!
(Laughter)
FIRST CITIZEN: Then let’s use ‘em!
MOB: Use ‘em!
SECOND CITIZEN: A word, my good friends!
VOICE: A word, he says. We’ve had enough bleeding words! (Cheers.)
FIRST CITIZEN: Don’t ‘good friends’ us – my good friends! The patricians call you ‘my good friend’ every day. And why? Because they can afford to! (Applause.)
We aren’t their ‘good friends’. We’re too expensive! Are you still taken in by this patronage and soft sell and big dealing for other people? Yes, others. And what others? People who were best off dead and long ago. I know this, you know this, and we know it, and because it’s there to be seen, seen in us, in us, and not some daft, obsolete, self-perpetuating senate.
(Roar)
SECOND CITIZEN: Tell me. No, let me say something a moment.
VOICE: Give a chance!
SECOND CITIZEN: Why do you single out Caius Marcius? Why? Why pick on him?
FIRST CITIZEN: Single out! Do you hear that! Pick on Caius Marcius !
(Shouts)
SECOND CITIZEN: Well, why?
FIRST CITIZEN: Because he is: is a pig.
(Roar)
And of all pigs, the piggiest of ‘em all.
(Louder roar)
SECOND CITIZEN: So you say.
VOICE: So say all of us!
(Cheers etc)
SECOND CITIZEN: Don’t you think he’s done something, cared something –
FIRST CITIZEN: For himself.
SECOND CITIZEN: His country.
VOICE: Somebody do him. (Etc)
FIRST CITIZEN: That’s all past.
SECOND CITIZEN: What is! Past.
FIRST CITIZEN: What I said: everything.
VOICE: You heard: all!
SECOND CITIZEN: All!
MOB: All. (Etc)
SECOND CITIZEN: Isn’t there any memory left! Just malice?
MOB: Get out of it, get stuffed. (Etc)
FIRST CITIZEN: He served his time, such as it was. And, mark you, his wife, his mother, his child, his fine houses, his horses.
SECOND CITIZEN: Is a man who keeps his wife, child, a horse, a house: a traitor, some – backslider or something?
FIRST CITIZEN: Yes.
MOB: Yes.
(Roar.)
SECOND CITIZEN: He’s had little more than most –
FIRST CITIZEN: So. Is that all the good you can find in him?
VOICE: Exploiter.
(Roar)
FIRST
CITIZEN: The Pigs are rising. Then let’s go and meet them. The Capitol!
MOB: The Capitol!
(They poise to go as MENENIUS enters, surrounded by a discreet guard of POLICEMEN and PLAIN CLOTHES MEN)
SECOND CITIZEN: Menenius! You can’t say he’s not honest! Even for a patrician, would you say he’s devious?
VOICE: Devious! No. Drunk more likely!
(Roar)
MENENIUS: What’s this, lads! Banners, police, stones, trampling –
VOICE: Affray!
MENENIUS: Ah – do I hear a legal mind?
VOICE: You have to be in this lark!
MENENIUS: Speak up then. You!
FIRST CITIZEN: The Senate is not exactly unaware of our existence.
VOICE: Too many of us by now.
(Roar)
FIRST CITIZEN: They’ve known a fortnight what we’ll do. And now they’ll see it really happen!
MENENIUS: My good friends…
VOICE: Good friends!
(Groans. Boos.)
MENENIUS: Will you ruin the life you’ve got?
FIRST CITIZEN: What life?
MENENIUS: Then the life you’re going to have.
VOICE: We’ve heard that a few times.
MENENIUS: I still say: the life you shall HAVE!
(A few cheers; some boos and disturbances; he manages to gain attention)
Shall have! I say it again. Shall
VOICE: I’ll bet. What about us.
(‘What about us’ etc.; MENENIUS waits for them to subside; hand-clapping, etc.)
MENENIUS: Shall I speak or not?
FIRST CITIZEN: No.
MOB: No.
FIRST CITIZEN: Textbook Oratory! There is no room in revolution for impartial leaders.
MOB: Pig! Pigs! Get the Pigs!
SECOND CITIZEN: Where’s custom then? Is there no virtue left?
FIRST CITIZEN: No!
SECOND CITIZEN: Precedent?
FIRST CITIZEN: Don’t appeal to precedent. Or we shall all die.
MOB: Dead! Dead!
SECOND CITIZEN: And Virtue.
FIRST CITIZEN: What’s that then?
MOB: Yes, what’s that then?
MENENIUS: The Riddle of Change, my good friend.
SECOND CITIZEN: The Riddle of Change’. Is that what it is! It’ll make a footnote for you. Where’s Caius Marcius? (He goes out but not without man-handling by the MOB. Or sections of it)
MENENIUS: I appeal to you!
VOICE: Oh, no, you don’t.
(Laughter.
MENENIUS lurches on)
MENENIUS: I beg you – let him go. He is one of us, whatever you may say.
VOICE: And you.
MENENIUS: We are you!
FIRST CITIZEN: Come off it!
MENENIUS: I will not come off it. As I’ve always done. (Some cheers.)
We are for you, we are yours, you can rid yourselves of us, whenever you wish! Whenever. But what then?
FIRST CITIZEN: Then we’ll see!
(Cheers.)
MENENIUS: But what? We Romans have a surplus of emotion all right. But what else? Do we have a surplus of trade?
VOICE: When did I work last then?
MENENIUS: Right, my good friend. But do you think no one cares for you? Why do you only bait and assault the ones who care the most for you?
FIRST CITIZEN: What care did you ever have for us!
MENENIUS: Think of our efforts!
FIRST CITIZEN: I’d rather not.
VOICE: More shooting and ‘tighten your belts’ and a bit off the taxes.
FIRST CITIZEN: If you’re lucky.
VOICE: Fine fucking effort!
(Roar.)
FIRST CITIZEN: I’ve heard enough.
MENENIUS: Rome must be a city worth saving for. Not in the next month. But the years to come.
VOICE: What about the meantime!
MENENIUS: It will be as mean and ready as you choose to make it.
FIRST CITIZEN: Easy laugh!
MENENIUS: We must have faith, confidence.
VOICE: You’re all right, mate. What about today?
MENENIUS: And I say, what of tomorrow? Be patient –
FIRST CITIZEN: While you spout?
MENENIUS: And what else do you do, my good friend.
VOICE: Yes, What does he do!
(Roar)
MENENIUS: Very well then. We are on the threshold of a new experience. Let’s embrace it, it and a Rome worth working for. When you talk of revolution so easily, so do I, so do I. I see the revolution of rising expectations. That – that is what concerns the Senate, your Senate. For what else is it? We must reconcile all expectations and try to disappoint none. We may fail in some but we will succeed in some. A note of steady expansion. We’ll not flinch. No, not from that. But there must be decisionmaking too. We must be a true community. For us in the Senate there is a special challenge. Not simply of book-making, of priorities. Major policies. Policies. Policies!
(His voice is drowned in the chorus of’Policies’.) There may be new methods, new machinery of government. Some untested, not even installed. As I told you we Romans have a surplus of emotion. What do the others have? A surplus of trade!
(Cheers.)
Different hopes to reconcile. People will save for homes, but where shall they be built? But they will be built. They will save for journeys to strange places and time to enjoy. Young marrieds, elder citizens of Rome, everyone.
(Cheers.)
We expand, the demands grow daily, the claim on resources is immense. Where next, you ask? Rome is the place we make of it. No more or less. But it’s no place now for the belly-aching and fouling-up process of by-passing dogs – as they must be passed by. We believe, we have to, in ourselves, our children, our Senate, with all its faults, our faults, our future. Our policies! Our Rome The rest will follow!
(He stands down to an ovation – more or less – from the MOB. Stands waving and smiling at them. Enter CAIUS MARCIUS with escort.)
Welcome. Welcome to you, Caius Marcius.
VOICE: Welcome. Oh, yes, welcome, Caius Marciusl
CAIUS MARCIUS: (CORIOLANUS from now) Thanks. So what goes on here, with these rabbling, purblind doomsters. Still scratching at their opinions like armpits!
FIRST CITIZEN: Not rhetoric! Already!
CORIOLANUS: What would you call this ‘gathering’ then? Noise and ceasing to be yourselves. Do I hear laughter? Where is it? No? It is a long time since I heard laughter any more than a kind word among you.
FIRST CITIZEN: You always have a kind word for us!
CORIOLANUS: You shouldn’t lead with irony. It’s not in your suit and never will be. What is it they want, impoverished slobs. Peace and war both intimidate you. You’ve no pride or fear either. All you deserve or want is insult and good luck to the man who offers it to you. Whoever might deserve anything resembling greatness deserves your loathing. Good luck to him, I say. Nose pressing on windows and the stink and steam of your own breath and safe ways. God save the man who depends or waits on your wants. You don’t believe me. You’re capable of anything. Every minute some so-called mind changes itself. You cavil, haggle, you’re wise after every event’s been routed by the simplest of intuition. What’s the matter with ‘em? Almost anything they get’d be too good for ‘em. Now, what are they after?
MENENIUS: They’ve certain demands –
CORIOLANUS: Demands! What do they offer?
MENENIUS: They say –
CORIOLANUS: They say! Rot ‘em.
VOICE: Rot you!
CORIOLANUS: No doubt. But it will be my choosing. They sit by the fire and – presume, presume to know. Know! What’s done in the Capitol, who’s on the way up or not, or down, think they can take sides and bring down their betters. They say! Demands! If everyone would lay aside this piety a moment, I’d soon have the heels of this mob.
MENENIUS: They do seem to have some idea of what they want. ‘Searching critiques of the dominant ideas about politics and
society’, I think someone mentioned.
CORIOLANUS: Politics and society!
MENENIUS: Practice and theory.
CORIOLANUS: Practice and theory!
MENENIUS: (Waffling in some confusion.) Industrial relations. Conformist ideals; technocratic skills, prevailing ideologies, vocational training, personnel management, investment planners.
CORIOLANUS: Prevailing ideologies.
MENENIUS: All phrases tend to get overheated in Rome.
CORIOLANUS: Well, they cool my blood. These shreds of personality have got enough already to break any generosity. And break the rule of law. Rather than obey if it’s bad and get it changed. In a free and civilised Rome, this is all achieved not by compulsion of authority but by the intelligence of individual men. We still have our right to campaign for repeal or amendment, and we’ve none of us believed otherwise.
VOICE: We!
CORIOLANUS: We! God grant I were ever you
MENENIUS: What have we offered?
CORIOLANUS: Five tribunes of their own choice. One to be Junius Brutus and the other Sicinius Velutus. Sicinius. And, oh and God knows who else! God’s death, they could have razed the city before I’d agreed. Give them a mouldy metre and they’ll take the earth.
MENENIUS: It could lead all ways.
CORIOLANUS: Go get on to your homes, young marrieds, rising, bright ones, citizens (senior), ravers, scoffers, silent ones, ones who speak their minds, turds, home, shower! (Enter a MESSENGER with briefcase and armed GUARD.)
MESSENGER: Caius Marcius?
CORIOLANUS: Here. What is it?
MESSENGER: The Volscians are up in arms. And literally. A girl of eight years old was murdered in the street an hour ago.
CORIOLANUS: Very well, then. Perhaps now we shall be seen to have some use. But what does it matter. What is said, forecast, commented on is what matters. Ah, senators, tribunes, flowers of Rome.
(Enter SICINIUS VELUTUS, JUNIUS BRUTUS, COMINIUS, TITUSLARTIUS with other SENATORS. SICINIUS is a pale-skinned coloured woman.)
Ah, Sicinius – a late entrance?
FIRST SENATOR: Don’t waste your spleen on Sicinius. The truth is we are really and indeed at war with the Volscians now.
CORIOLANUS: Fancy. And what will Sicinius do about it? March for them I’ve no doubt. But I tell you, they have a leader already, Tullus Aufidius –
MOB: AUFIDIUS.
CORIOLANUS: Who might surprise you all. If I were not myself, if I am even that, I would like nothing more than to be Aufidius.
