by John Osborne
MENENIUS: That’s enough.
BRUTUS: Enough for us!
CORIOLANUS: No, not enough for me. Well, let’s get to your policies; the ones without purpose, except to indulge the worst of you and pacify the rest.
SICINIUS: Your mouth is your undoing, my friend. Have you not heard of such a thing as reticence in politicking?
CORIOLANUS: I have not learned from you. You are too trivial for reticence; otherwise you would disappear up your own supporters. In a rebellion like this, we must live under the law or there will be no life for the most of us.
SICINIUS: Or change it.
CORIOLANUS: Change it! Administer it. You could not own a stall in the market without state assistance.
SICINIUS: This a consul? No!
(Enter an AEDILE – a sort of people’s policeman.)
(To AEDILE.) Take him. Get the city all together.
(Exit AEDILE.)
CORIOLANUS: Go on, get them together, ‘policeman’ – policeman of the piss poor! Get off out of it, hairy charm-pits.
PATRICIANS: We’ll stand surety for him.
(The tribunes attack COMINIUS. CORIOLANUS intervenes, grabbing them)
CORIOLANUS: Get off before I play marbles with the two of you!
SICINIUS: Help!
(Confusion as police and troops arrive. Roars and singing from outside.)
Scene 13
A public square. Crowds and noise. As before, only more so, from Rome.
ALL: Tribunes! – Patricians! – Citizens! – Ay, ay! Sicinius! Brutus! Coriolanus! Workers! People!
MENENIUS: Will you listen. I can’t make myself heard if you won’t listen. I can’t speak. You, tribunes, speak to them. Hold back, Coriolanus. Sicinius, you are the one they want to hear!
SICINIUS: Comrades! People! Listen!
CROWD: Go on then! Get on with it! Let’s hear some bit of sense. (Etc)
SICINIUS: Just this: you’re about to lose your freedom, that’s all. Marcius will have the lot off you. Yes, Caius Marcius, whom you even chose to elect as consul!
MENENIUS: Now then, now. This is the way to rioting, not public discussion of the issue.
FIRST SENATOR: This way we’ll just end up a flattened city and nothing else.
SICINIUS: What’s the city but the people in it?
ALL: The people are the city. We are the people – CITY!
We are the people – CITY! We are the people – CITY!
(They are held back. Just.)
BRUTUS: And who represents them, that city?
ALL: You do! CITY! CITY! CITY!
MENENIUS: And so you will go on doing.
COMINIUS: This is the way to bring us all down to a new age of desolation and darkness.
SICINIUS: You hear that? Darkness he calls it. What is that to us?
ALL: Light. LIGHT! Light!
BRUTUS: MARCIUS out!
SICINIUS: You hear that!
ALL: MARCIUS OUT!
SICINIUS: Get him.
ALL: (CITIZENS) Get, down, MARCIUS. Out, Marcius, O-U-T, out!
MENENIUS: Give me a word, I ask you!
BRUTUS: We know your ‘Old school’. Grab him.
MENENIUS: Someone help MARCIUS.
CROWD: Get him! Get him! (Etc.)
(Confusion as people and policemen, troops confront each other. Howling, people trod underfoot. The crowd surges forward but is scattered)
CORIOLANUS: We are not without friends.
COMINIUS: Let’s get out of it.
(They go under escort.)
MENENIUS: Go home. All of you. In the name of Rome and your children and their children. We shall sit down and talk this out or give up everything.
SICINIUS: (To MOB) What? Coriolanus? Well?
MENENIUS: Your consul.
SICINIUS: What consul?
BRUTUS: He, consul?
CROWD: No, no, no, NO. Out, out, out out!
(MENENIUS goes out.)
SICINIUS: Oh, we’ll talk.
(Cheers from MOB.)
Scene 14
Rome. The house of CORIOLANUS. Enter CORIOLANUS with MENENIUS, SENATORS.
CORIOLANUS: My mother’s disapproval does surprise me. Even though it’s so obvious by now. She was always the first to support me – even in her best misunderstanding. (Enter VOLUMNIA)
Well, now, Mother, I’m talking of you. Why do you want me to be milder then? You, you to want me false to my nature? Rather than take a stab at what I am?
VOLUMNIA: Oh, Caius, I want only what is best for you and what’s best for you must be best for Rome.
CORIOLANUS: Oh, enough of that!
VOLUMNIA: You can be the man you are without striving this much. You would have done better to show less, not more.
CORIOLANUS: Let ‘em hang.
VOLUMNIA: Oh, and burn too.
MENENIUS: Come, come, you’re indiscreet to the point of lunacy. But there’s still time to make amends. There always is.
SENATOR: If you don’t we shall all be brought down, if the city itself doesn’t disappear for good.
VOLUMNIA: Listen to them, Caius. My heart’s just the same as yours, but its detachment’s still there –
MENENIUS: Well said. He must address himself to the situation as it is, not as he would have it.
CORIOLANUS: What do you want me to do?
MENENIUS: Take it all back and do it with conviction. They are not fooled easily.
CORIOLANUS: For them. I could not do it for my wife, my son, my life. Would you get me to do it for them?
VOLUMNIA: You are too passionate and too pedantic with it. Like, they say wrongly, women – only it’s not so.
CORIOLANUS: Too passionate or too pedantic?
VOLUMNIA: Neither. I won’t argue with you in this mood. But I’ve heard you say yourself honour and policy can go together without necessarily debasing one another.
CORIOLANUS: I must have been drunk, ironic; both; that or you weren’t listening to my real voice.
MENENIUS: Listen to her.
VOLUMNIA: After all, if you can see your way to bluffing so successfully in war, why not now, when far more’s at stake?
CORIOLANUS: Why pursue it?
VOLUMNIA: Because now is not the time to indulge in passion but talk in terms that everyone will accept and understand. There’s no dishonour in bringing the city to just terms merely by using the right form of words. How can you play emotion with so much future? I would do far more. For your wife, your son, these upright senators, all of them. Do you want just to impress louts with your intransigence? They don’t know what it means!
MENENIUS: She’s right. But we must make a move while there’s still time.
VOLUMNIA: My son. Do it. We, who know you the most, we’ll know what you are doing and why.
MENENIUS: Do as she says, and we still have a chance…
VOLUMNIA: Go and look as if you have been overruled. It’s not beyond you.
(Enter COMINIUS.)
COMINIUS: It’s all uproar. Only Coriolanus can damp it down. Even so, it looks like being too late.
MENENIUS: A few words… The right appearance.
VOLUMNIA: He must, he will. I beg you, say you will…
CORIOLANUS: Go out there to lie? A lie that’s mine for always? Well, I’ll do it. I’ll put on the right face, the familiar expressions, the flattened, conciliatory vowels. I will, what is it, agree, no, not agree, plead for arbitration.
COMINIUS: We’ll all help you.
VOLUMNIA: You have done things before you hated. Do this, just for this last time.
CORIOLANUS: Well then, I must do it. Don’t press your point, Mother, I’ll dissemble better than the best of you.
VOLUMNIA: Do as you like.
(Exit VOLUMNIA.)
COMINIUS: The tribunes are waiting. Be prepared indeed to conciliate, be mild. They are watching for every flicker. Heaven knows what new things they’ve up their sleeves.
CORIOLANUS: Right. ‘Mildly’ is the word. Let’s get it over with. I have
a few unplayed tricks of my own.
MENENIUS: But mildly, remember.
CORIOLANUS: Well, mildly be it then. Mildly.
Scene 15
Rome. The Forum. SICINIUS and BRUTUS raised above the MOB. Crescendo as they appear above everyone.
MOB: We want Marcius!
We want Marcius!
We want Marcius!
BRUTUS: He’s coming.
SICINIUS: Who with?
BRUTUS: Menenius and his old mob.
SICINIUS: Have you a count of votes?
BRUTUS: It’s all done.
SICINIUS: Each area?
BRUTUS: Every one. That matters.
SICINIUS: Get them all in close. And when I say: ‘It’s the voice of the people’ – whether it be for a fine, banishment, or death; if I say Tine’ yell ‘Fine’, if ‘Let him have it’, then ‘Let him have it’, ‘Kill him’ and so on. Understood? Death in revolution can’t be called ‘murder’ afterwards. So, look to it.
BRUTUS: Will do. The stewards know already. If he’s not on the boil already, they’ll soon turn him up. He’s not used to being answered in his own insulting coin. Once we’ve got him good and riled, there’s no going back. He’ll put his heart, where his neck is, on the chopper. (Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, COMINIUS and others)
SICINIUS: So, there he is at long last.
MENENIUS: Calm, now.
CORIOLANUS: I have promised. I will try: for Rome.
FIRST SENATOR: Amen, amen.
MENENIUS: Good lad!
SICINIUS: Listen to me, hear out your tribunes. Calm it down. Now. Please. I ask you!
CORIOLANUS: First, let me speak.
SICINIUS: Well now.
BRUTUS: His lordship’s come to talk to you!
CORIOLANUS: Do we, can we, come to some terms in, in this place?
SICINIUS: I merely ask that you put your case to these citizens who’ve gathered here, with their lawful officers. And that you accept their reply. That’s all.
CORIOLANUS: Very well.
MENENIUS: You see? He’s served us all in our different ways.
CORIOLANUS: Only with laughter?
MENENIUS: Just so. He doesn’t mince words. And not a bad thing in these times, I say!
COMINIUS: Get on with it.
CORIOLANUS: Why have you changed your minds and turned against me so late in the game?
SICINIUS: You tell us!
CORIOLANUS: I’ll try.
SICINIUS: They’ve discovered at last that all moderation would end with you.
CORIOLANUS: And you!
SICINIUS: I love this city. Most of all, I love its people. You are its traitor; their traitor and they have found you out.
CORIOLANUS: How? Traitor!
MENENIUS: Mild, mild, you said.
CORIOLANUS: Call me traitor, you dead droppings of old cant. You lie. You lie in your green teeth!
SICINIUS: You hear him? Such moderation…
MOB: Do him. Do him! Kill him! Kill him! Kill… (Etc.)
SICINIUS: Enough, cowards. Enough, for we’ve seen enough. Haven’t we seen enough of this – MAN!
BRUTUS: It’s true he’s done some things for Rome.
CORIOLANUS: What do you know about it?
BRUTUS: I know what I’m talking about.
CORIOLANUS: You!
MENENIUS: So much for your promise to your mother.
COMINIUS: Now, listen a moment –
CORIOLANUS: I wouldn’t take their say-so for NUPPENCE one way or the other. I wouldn’t give ‘em the sweat from my balls.
SICINIUS: Let him go before he’s killed – and it wouldn’t be unjust –
MOB: Send him off! Take him off! Get lost! And for damned good and forever… (Etc)
COMINIUS: Listen!
SICINIUS: You heard the verdict clear enough. Again? (Roar)
Right. He’s done for. No more talk. We have heard it all before from your like.
BRUTUS: Right. That’s it then.
MOB: That’s it! That’s it! (Etc)
CORIOLANUS: You common cry of curs. You take up my air. Banish me? I banish you Stay here in your slum. And strike. Communicate. Get shaken with rumours; fads; modishness; greed; fashion; your clannishness; your lives in depth. May you, but you won’t, one minute of that depth, know desolation. May your enemies barter and exchange you coolly in their own better market-places… I have seen the future here… and it doesn’t work! I turn my back. There is a world elsewhere! (He goes off, borne away by his supporters and sorely harassed escort. CORIOLANUS sings down at them a parody of ‘The Red Flag’.)
The working class
Can kiss my arse
And keep their Red
Rag flying high.’
(He is swept off, pursued by the furious MOB)
End of Act One.
ACT TWO
Scene 1
Airport. CORIOLANUS, VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, MENENIUS, COMINIUS. CORIOLANUS is embracing VIRGILIA.
CORIOLANUS: Come, that’s enough. Farewells really are a lifetime. Come along, Mother, you’ve always been only too good on these occasions – away to school, the army, death beds, funerals, you’ve been an admirable Goodbyer. I thought you’d taught me pretty well.
VIRGILIA: Oh, Caius, Caius.
CORIOLANUS: I beg you –
VOLUMNIA: You giggled when I used to talk of red pestilence; the trades of Rome; all occupations gone but war and bargaining and faction –
CORIOLANUS: What’s this? You should miss me when I’m here, not gone or about to go. Be the same as ever was, Mother. Cominius, my friend, this will all change and sort itself out as it has before… Goodbye, Virgilia… Menenius, soppy old thing, I always knew it. My old chief, my friend. Look after them all. I know you will. Mother, you know that my worst setbacks have stirred you on. Not cast you down. Don’t think I go my own way easily or lightly. More talked about and forgotten… and not seen. I will do more than the usual, as you know, unless I’m sold out, who knows how?
VOLUMNIA: My very first son, where will you go? Take Cominius with you. Make some plan first rather than expose yourself to every wildcat waiting in every corner for you.
CORIOLANUS: Oh, God!
COMINIUS: I’ll come with you. Somewhere we can hole up and draw up a proper campaign. So, when the time comes, as it will, when they need you back, there’ll be no other man left in the world they’ll turn to. They’ll soon see what’s lacking in them.
CORIOLANUS: No, Cominius, it’s too late for you to follow me on this kind of jaunt. Just see me off. Come, Virgilia, Mother, Menenius. Just see the going of me and go home for a gossip and a drink or two. You shall hear from me. And never any differently than before.
MENENIUS: Exactly. I still wish I were young enough to come with you.
CORIOLANUS: Give me your hand. Come.
(They go out.)
Scene 2
Rome. Airport. SICINIUS and BRUTUS.
SICINIUS: They can all go home. He’s gone and that’s that. The top brass are pretty fed up with us, but, of course, they’ve sided with him all along; and at his extremist, though they’d dare not say as much.
BRUTUS: Now we’ve shown the support we’ve got, we can afford to seem more amenable.
SICINIUS: We can all go home and say the great fanatic who represents no responsible opinion has gone and we are back to where we were and can start again.
BRUTUS: That’s his mother.
(Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA and MENENIUS.)
SICINIUS: Let’s avoid her.
BRUTUS: Why?
SICINIUS: They say she’s gone quite cracked.
BRUTUS: They’ve seen us. Keep going.
VOLUMNIA: Ah, there you are. Your comeuppance hasn’t been called yet, but it will.
MENENIUS: Don’t raise your voice. It’s pointless.
VOLUMNIA: Do you think I am not trying –
(In tears.) Or they’d hear –
No, you will hear.
(To BRUTUS.) Going?
VIRGILIA: (To SICINIUS.) Yes, and you stay too. I wish I could have said so to my husband.
SICINIUS: What are you then? Mankind? Or something?
VOLUMNIA: That was a shoddy answer. My father was mankind, if you like. You think you have the wit to keep my Coriolanus out of Rome, who has done more, thought more, been more –
SICINIUS: Not that! God preserve us that!
VOLUMNIA: More than your old, reach-me-down words. I tell you. I tell you what – no, go. No, you shall stay. You are not fit to meet him face to face whatever world you found yourselves in.
SICINIUS: So?
VIRGILIA: So? He’ll see you out!
VOLUMNIA: Bastards and all. Oh, what has happened to him!
MENENIUS: Come, come…
SICINIUS: It’s a pity he did not go on as he seemed to start – on all our behalves.
BRUTUS: It is.
VOLUMNIA: It is! It was you who roused them up. Like tom cats in the night who know as little of what he is as I know of what lies ahead of us.
BRUTUS: Let’s go.
VOLUMNIA: Yes, you go! You must be feeling very brave today. But before you do, listen to this: as far as all Rome is finer than you each in your little houses, this lady’s husband is better than any one of you.
BRUTUS: Well, we’ll go.
SICINIUS: Why stay to be harangued by a dotty old woman!
(Tribunes exit.)
VOLUMNIA: And my fingers with you! If I had nothing else to do but think of alternatives to them If only I could set eyes on them once a day, it might help.
MENENIUS: They got your message, madam. Shall we dine together?
VOLUMNIA:I can’t eat except what’s in here for them. Very well, let’s get going. We can’t stand wasting time.
MENENIUS: Oh, dear.
(They all go.)
Scene 3
Antium. Near AUFIDIUS’s headquarters. CORIOLANUS comes out of a drab-looking pub, dressed like a working man. A MAN follows him out.
CORIOLANUS: Good evening to you.
MAN: And to you.
CORIOLANUS: Tell me, if it’s possible, where’s Aufidius?
MAN: Aufidius?
CORIOLANUS: He is in Antium?
MAN: Everyone knows that. He’ll be having a right old carouse with the best of ‘em tonight.
