Book Read Free

Four Plays

Page 15

by John Osborne


  LARTIUS: Watch and try to make contact. Come on. (Goes with the rest. Quiet. Then CORIOLANUS and AUFIDIUS are seen to be stalking each other with rifles and/or pistols through street windows and doors and crouching behind rubble and oil cans)

  CORIOLANUS: (Shouts.) I’ll have you, Aufidius. You’re the one.

  AUFIDIUS: And you’re mine.

  CORIOLANUS: Let’s have you.

  AUFIDIUS: Let’s see you run.

  CORIOLANUS: I? RUN! You’d better do better than you’re doing now.

  AUFIDIUS: Got you.

  (Rapid exchange of fire between them, desperate running and dodging as each almost kills the other. Some VOLSCIANS come to their leader’s aid.)

  CORIOLANUS: Reinforcements crawling up, eh, you slum rat! Vermin always need other vermin! See you.

  (He disappears under a volley of fire from AUFIDIUS, who curses to his followers, then also disappears. After a while a badly wounded CORIOLANUS is led in by COMINIUS and troops)

  COMINIUS: Thank God for you, Caius.

  (Enter LARTIUS.)

  LARTIUS: Have you seen!

  CORIOLANUS: Berserk. We’ve done what we could.

  COMINIUS: Rome will know about it and judge for themselves. They always do. And they shall know the truth of it, not some seeking, rabbling accounts of it from outsiders.

  CORIOLANUS: (In pain) Ah.

  (Two ORDERLIES attend on him. There are a few cheers) Wait for the reports, the courts, the writers after the events; the ones who’ll call us bloody and never mind your wounds or skill or patience. They won’t tell you then your Roman’s better than any other in the world, spat at, abused, cheerful and always shot at. And in their favourite target – the back.

  COMINIUS: Be thankful for small tributes. But they won’t be small; we’ll see to that. Rome shall know.

  ALL: Lord Coriolanus!

  COMINIUS: Aye, and no joke either. Caius Marcius; Lord Coriolanus.

  ALL: Caius Marcius, CORIOLANUS!

  (Cheers.)

  COMINIUS: Rome shall know. I promise you. Titus, set up your headquarters.

  CORIOLANUS: Can I just do one thing. An old woman in the street down there – and then I saw Aufidius.

  COMINIUS: We’ll see to it. Which house?

  CORIOLANUS: Ye Gods, I’ve forgotten! I’m tired suddenly. Is there a drink?

  COMINIUS: Let’s go in there. That looks nasty. Sergeant!

  (ORDERLIES bear off CORIOLANUS. The rest follow.)

  Scene 7

  The camp of the VOLSCIANS. An old hall with trestle tables, maps, flags, guns, bombs, ammunition. Enter AUFIDIUS, bloodstained, with followers.

  AUFIDIUS: Well, the town’s taken.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: We’ll get it back on the right terms.

  AUFIDIUS: Terms. I wish I were a Roman at this moment – almost. Terms! What terms can be right that we don’t make. Five times I’ve fought against you, Marcius, and always I’m made a meal of. God, if we ever meet again, it’s his eyeballs or mine. I’ll have him all to myself the next time.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: He’s the devil all right.

  AUFIDIUS: Just as bold if not quite so subtle. Nothing, not sleep, food, religion, esteem, Capitol; nor all the interests of intercedence or arbitration come between me and my Marcius. If I find him, in bed with his wife or tied to his child and mother, I’ll have that heart out and any going with it… Go into the city. Find out what’s happening, hostages, help from outside, any report you can get, any source.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: Won’t you come?

  AUFIDIUS: They’re waiting for me at our arranged point across the border. Get to it and find out so that I can get on accordingly.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: Sir!

  (Salutes stiffly and goes out, leaving AUFIDIUS brooding in the dust and darkness of his trestle table and blackboards)

  Scene 8

  Rome. A conference room. Informal. MENENIUS is talking conversationally with TRIBUNES of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS.

  MENENIUS: Well, the indications are, gentlemen, that there will be news before the night is out.

  BRUTUS: Good or bad?

  MENENIUS: If I am informed correctly, not what your so-called man in the street will welcome very much; knowing as we do how they feel about Marcius.

  SICINIUS: Simplest of animals, lambs, to know at once who likes you or not.

  MENENIUS: Tell me then, who would you say the wolf loves?

  SICINIUS: The lamb.

  MENENIUS: Yes, to destroy him. After using him. Like the Plebians would do to Marcius given the merest chance.

  BRUTUS: He’s a lamb all right. Unfortunately he makes noises more like a bear.

  MENENIUS: He may make the noises of a bear to you and me but within the fugitive place that strange sound comes from I assure you, gentlemen, there is quite the smallest of lambs. Tell me one thing. You are both up with the times and know all that’s going on. Tell me something that seems to escape me at the moment.

  SICINIUS: Well?

  MENENIUS: What fault do you think that it is, that Marcius has that you two may not have even more of?

  BRUTUS: I can’t think of any he hasn’t inherited – like most of his kind; and looked after well and brought to every dividend you can think of.

  SICINIUS: Pride’s gilt-edged.

  BRUTUS: Some modest trading in old-fashioned Roman boasting is always good for a bit.

  MENENIUS: How very interesting. Having said that, what would you say was the opinion of you here in the city – I mean all those of us you’d call ‘the other side’? Do you know or does it never bother you, I suppose.

  SICINIUS: So what is their opinion?

  MENENIUS: Only that – you understand we are talking of pride now – so you won’t be angry.

  SICINIUS: Why should we?

  MENENIUS: Why should you? I can think of very little that could ever make you climb down or change your sides, but as we are just together, the three of us, tell me what it is you really think; and it’ll go no further. Now: you blame Marcius for the sin of pride.

  BRUTUS: We are not exactly alone in that.

  MENENIUS: Oh, I know you would not feel it if you were in any way alone. You have too much on your side, perhaps the course of history itself. Otherwise you might appear some time to be no more than just ingenuous eccentrics or something of the kind. Your talents are too blessedly childlike to be used anywhere but inside oh, what; playgroups and working crowds. You talk of pride; if you could only just once, the once, look inwards and make a good old inner survey of your own good selves; see what lies among the old props holding up the faces of those worked-on seams; that I would like to see very much.

  SICINIUS: Would you, and what then?

  MENENIUS: I think that you might discover a pair of the most unmeriting, proud, over-exposed, vicious and violent middle men and (To SICINIUS) sorry – women, we have ever had or known in Rome.

  SICINIUS: Menenius, let me tell you, let me tell you and you surely must know it, that everyone knows well enough what you are and have done for a long time.

  MENENIUS: Indeed I do. I have a reputation for wit and every irony which as we all know, is always disastrous for a politician. Also that I like good food and wine and don’t prefer the muck in the market place without questioning, merely because it is the most known and the most available. On the other hand, when I do believe in what I say, my malice is wasted as much as anyone else’s. No one believes in that either. If I sit down with two statesmen like yourself I cannot take you seriously any more than you me. When you give me your beer or tea to drink, it just isn’t in me to pretend I like the stuff.

  SICINIUS: Which is why you love Marcius?

  MENENIUS: Which is one reason why I love Caius Marcius. I can’t say that you impress me either with your arguments or the delivery of them; I have to appear to go along with those who say that you are serious and clever. I can only say that I don’t like the look of either of you. Even I am a better sight to look on than either of y
ou two; but I am sure you would be the first to agree that this is very inconsequential. Tell me what it is that you see in me; what is it that’s so bad; so calculating, so insignificant; so resolutely turned against Rome’s future; and only of benefit to my own ends?

  BRUTUS: Come, sir, we know you.

  MENENIUS You don’t know me, yourselves, or any other damn thing. Oh, you are all out for standing ovations and outstretched hands. You’ll spend a sunny morning on the same sides of the table arguing the case between two pins and one and come back happily in the afternoon; when it happens to suit you, you’ll put on any kind of act providing that you think it’ll work. Start roaring out for marches, demonstrations in the streets and barricades and bloody flags and who knows what. All the messiahs of your own voices. The only peace you ever make is abusing everyone. Oh yes, my friends, you are a pair of strange ones.

  BRUTUS: Come, come, Menenius. You know, and we know, that you’ll be better remembered as an after-dinner speaker in the provinces rather than a serious politician in the Capitol.

  MENENIUS: Even priests have to mock sometimes when they’re confronted with the truly insignificant absurd. Well, I suppose you must be saying, still saying, that Marcius is proud; who at the merest calculation is worth more than you and all your predecessors since I can bother to remember. Perhaps the best of them might have inherited the skills of an executioner and that’s about the lot. Good night, my friends. More of your conversation at this time of night would honestly make my brain reel; like a shepherd with a lot of drunken sheep to round up. I hope I haven’t been too open. I don’t think I have.

  (He gets up and leaves BRUTUS and SICINIUS alone in their chairs)

  SICINIUS: People like him are only open behind closed doors.

  (BRUTUS takes out a sheet of paper and hands it to SICINIUS)

  BRUTUS: Caius Marcius is coming home.

  SICINIUS: I see. He’ll have more cause than ever to strut about.

  Scene 9

  Airport near Rome. MENENIUS, ATTENDANTS, POLICEMEN, etc. Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA and VALERIA.

  VOLUMNIA: Menenius, my dear, good friend. Marcius, my boy Marcius is on his way. He’s coming home.

  MENENIUS: Almost here. (He looks up)

  VOLUMNIA: And, Menenius, look at the crowds here to greet him, all along the route from Rome, as well as here!

  MENENIUS: I know. And thank heaven for them. (He embraces VOLUMNIA) Hooray. Marcius coming home.

  VOLUMNIA: Look, here’s a letter from him! The State’s got another, his wife another; and, oh, I think there’s one at home for you.

  MENENIUS: At my house. Those fools must have made me miss it. I’ll dash home after, make no mistake. I feel a new man, already. He is the best cure there is for any of us. Aches, pains or what you will. Is he well?

  VIRGILIA: Oh, no, no, no.

  VOLUMNIA: If he isn’t, we’ll take care of him and thank heavens we can.

  MENENIUS: If it’s not too bad this time.

  VOLUMNIA: This is the third time he has come home to all this.

  MENENIUS: I understand he salted Aufidius’s tail for him.

  VOLUMNIA: Titus Lartius says they got barrel to barrel but Aufidius got off.

  MENENIUS: Not too soon, I’11 bet. We must see that a full statement is made to the Senate before any questioning in the middle of all this.

  VOLUMNIA: Let’s look out for him. Yes, yes, yes. The Senate has had the General’s report and my son’s part in it.

  VALERIA: Isn’t it exciting! Where can we see best?

  MENENIUS: Exciting! Yes, and well-sweated for.

  VIRGILIA: If only it all goes well.

  VOLUMNIA: Well? How else can it.

  MENENIUS:(To the tribunes, who have appeared) Just in time, my good friends. He’s almost here. Where is he wounded?

  VOLUMNIA: All over. They’ll see.

  VIRGILIA: (Looking up at the sky) Not if I can help it.

  VALERIA: One in the neck and two in the thigh I was told –

  VOLUMNIA: Twenty-five before he ever started this campaign.

  MENENIUS: Here he comes.

  VIRGILIA: Where! Where!

  MENENIUS: Just listen to that noise.

  VIRGILIA: Damn the noise. Where is he?

  VOLUMNIA: The cause of all this?

  (The airport has gone wild with shouting and chanting)

  VIRGILIA: And the tears he’s left behind him.

  VOLUMNIA: Not Marcius. They brought their deaths on themselves. He’s the arm, if you like, not all of it, mind.

  VIRGILIA: Nor heart, I should hope.

  (Shouts and some confusion. COMINIUS and LARTIUS enter. Between them, discreetly but dashingly uniformed, is CORIOLANUS, accompanied by MEDICAL ORDERLIES, OFFICIALS, etc. Shouts of’Caius Marcius’, Lord Marcius of Corioli,’ ‘Corio-lan-usf Corio-lan-us!’.)

  CORIOLANUS: Are they all gone mad or what? That will do, I think. I’ve seen enough sickening things today; even for my stomach.

  COMINIUS: Your mother’s here.

  CORIOLANUS: Oh, I know you’re all overjoyed –

  VOLUMNIA: Don’t be modest, of all things; my by-rights-gentle Marcius; Caius who always truly ‘deserved’. And now you receive it; however brief it may turn out to be, however much of a one night stand; it’s yours, and yours by your own efforts. But, Caius, no, what is it we must call you now? Oh, here’s your wife. Now the Lady –

  CORIOLANUS: I’ve seen and done bad things.

  MENENIUS: No, no. You are tired, you need rest; make some space there!

  CORIOLANUS: Valeria, my dear, forgive me.

  VOLUMNIA: I don’t know what to say. Cominius, welcome back, all of you.

  MENENIUS: Yes, all of you. It’s a sad day and a good, for all that. Anyone here will see that.

  COMINIUS: Quite so. Make way along there. Make a path.

  CORIOLANUS (To VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA) Here!

  Both of you. Before I ever get home there are people I’ve got to see. Of course. It just has to be done.

  VOLUMNIA: Today, everything I have ever wanted is true; yours and mine; so what can anything else matter? There is only one thing left for Rome to offer you and, after this, I can’t see them refusing it you.

  CORIOLANUS: You have an instinct in these things, matters, Mother.

  COMINIUS: Time for us to get off to the Capitol.

  (In some confusion and clamour, as before, they go, leaving

  SICINIUS and BRUTUS)

  BRUTUS: For a few hours, he’ll be different from the rest of us. Apparently. Until it turns out, is made out, different.

  SICINIUS: Just as you say. But with such supporters, who needs –

  BRUTUS: Enemies… True.

  SICINIUS: People in Rome don’t forget their fathers and grandfathers on account of one day’s bit of circus. They’re familiar enough with all this bit. They’re just as quick to be antagonised.

  BRUTUS: I’ve heard him say enough times, and you too, that he’ll never ‘put himself up to the mob’ – quick though he is to use ‘em when it suits him. I can’t see him putting himself up to please. Can you? Unless appearing, mark, appearing to displease, when the wind’s in the right place and then only then.

  SICINIUS: Right, then let’s make sure of it.

  BRUTUS: That everyone is quite certain in their own minds what he really means and thinks of them.

  SICINIUS: He will. They will know. He’ll see to that. The rest is up to us.

  (Enter a MESSENGER.) What is it?

  MESSENGER: You’re to go to the Capitol. Marcius is up for Consul already. The returns are overwhelmingly in his favour. I’m astonished you’re not there.

  SICINIUS: We know. You forget. We have been there before.

  (They go out.)

  Scene 10

  Rome. A public place. Outcry. Two senior POLICE OFFICERS conduct the crowd and observe.

  SECOND POLICE OFFICER: They all say Coriolanus will have his way, in spite of all this.

  FIRST POLICE OFFI
CER: Oh, he’s brave enough and clever enough. But is he clever enough – he loves no one here today, that’s for sure. If any day. And shows it what’s more.

  SECOND POLICE OFFICER: There have been plenty enough in the past to govern the people without liking them; let alone loving them. They’ve flattered without even hating them, like Coriolanus does.

  FIRST POLICE OFFICER: No one can hate so spectacularly without being tied up by love somewhere.

  SECOND POLICE OFFICER: Who knows? It’ll end soon enough. In the meantime, we’ve enough on our hands to see that he gets a safe escort while he’s with us to still need it.

  (Enter the PATRICIANS, and the tribunes of the people; they are moving forward and are just held back as CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS and COMINIUS – now dressed as a Consul – enter. SICINIUS and BRUTUS separate themselves and take up prominent positions by the people of Rome.)

  MENENIUS: (Silencing the crowd, more or less) Having done with – yes, done with I say, done with the Volsces, and apart from recalling Titus Lartius, the main business, the only truly pleasurable one in all this business, it should be publicly spelled out what part was played in the very best of that tragic business by: Caius Marcius Coriolanus.

  (Some cries of: CORIO-LAN-US!)

  Which is why we are rallied here together; all sections and representatives of the people of Rome; patricians, so-called plebians, tribunes of the people, consuls, we are all, yes, all I say, citizens of Rome. And who is not proud to say so?

  SICINIUS: Let’s hear from Coriolanus himself on that.

  FIRST SENATOR: You speak first, Cominius. Leave nothing out. (To the TRIBUNES) Let him have the floor, and then it will be your turn.

  SICINIUS: We are here to listen as well as say our piece. Always have been.

  BRUTUS: We can’t always be expected though to control carefully calculated incitements to the ordinary people; the Heart of Rome itself. That’s your time-honoured occupation; indeed, obsession.

  MENENIUS: That’s not on. Not on at all. I’d rather you’d not said that. On second thoughts –

  SICINIUS: As always –

  MENENIUS: I’m glad you did. Will you allow Cominius to speak?

  BRUTUS: Certainly. I was merely pointing out that you cannot blame us for not having the resources to control situations created by yourselves.

 

‹ Prev