PERICLES
Look who kneels here: flesh of thy flesh, Thaisa,
Thy burden at the sea, and called Marina
For she was yielded there.
THAISA ⌈embracing Marina⌉ Blessed, and mine own! HELICANUS ⌈kneeling to Thaisa⌉
Hail, madam, and my queen.
THAISA I know you not.
PERICLES
You have heard me say, when I did fly from Tyre,
I left behind an ancient substitute.
Can you remember what I called the man?
I have named him oft.
THAISA ’Twas Helicanus then.
PERICLES Still confirmation.
Embrace him, dear Thaisa; this is he.
Now do I long to hear how you were found,
How possibly preserved, and who to thank—
Besides the gods—for this great miracle.
THAISA
Lord Cerimon, my lord. This is the man
Through whom the gods have shown their pow’r,
that can
From first to last resolve you.
PERICLES (to Cerimon) Reverend sir,
The gods can have no mortal officer
More like a god than you. Will you deliver
How this dead queen re-lives?
CERIMON I will, my lord.
Beseech you, first go with me to my house,
Where shall be shown you all was found with her,
And told how in this temple she came placed,
No needful thing omitted.
PERICLES
Pure Diana,
I bless thee for thy vision, and will offer
Nightly oblations to thee.—Beloved Thaisa,
This prince, the fair betrothed of your daughter,
At Pentapolis shall marry her.
(To Marina) And now this ornament
Makes me look dismal will I clip to form,
And what this fourteen years no razor touched,
To grace thy marriage day I’ll beautify.
THAISA
Lord Cerimon hath letters of good credit,
Sir, from Pentapolis: my father’s dead.
PERICLES
Heav’n make a star of him! Yet there, my queen,
We’ll celebrate their nuptials, and ourselves
Will in that kingdom spend our following days.
Our son and daughter shall in Tyrus reign.—
Lord Cerimon, we do our longing stay
To hear the rest untold. Sir, lead ’s the way.
Exeunt ⌈all but Gower⌉
GOWER
In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard
Of monstrous lust the due and just reward;
In Pericles, his queen, and daughter seen,
Although assailed with fortune fierce and keen,
Virtue preserved from fell destruction’s blast,
Led on by heav’n, and crowned with joy at last.
In Helicanus may you well descry
A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty.
In reverend Cerimon there well appears
The worth that learned charity aye wears.
For wicked Cleon and his wife, when fame
Had spread their cursed deed to th’ honoured name
Of Pericles, to rage the city turn,
That him and his they in his palace burn.
The gods for murder seemed so content
To punish that, although not done, but meant.
So on your patience evermore attending,
New joy wait on you. Here our play has ending.
Exit
ADDITIONAL PASSAGES
Q gives this more expansive version of Marina’s Epitaph (18.347):
’The fairest, sweetest, best lies here,
Who withered in her spring of year.
She was of Tyrus the King’s daughter,
On whom foul death hath made this slaughter.
Marina was she called, and at her birth
Thetis, being proud, swallowed some part o‘th’ earth;
Therefore the earth, fearing to be o’erflowed,
Hath Thetis’ birth-child on the heav‘ns bestowed,
Wherefore she does, and swears she’ll never stint,
Make raging batt’ry upon shores of flint.’
CORIOLANUS
FOR Coriolanus, Shakespeare turned once more to Roman history as told by Plutarch and translated by Sir Thomas North in the Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans published in 1579. This time he dramatized early events, not much subsequent to those he had written about many years previously in The Rape of Lucrece. Plutarch gave him most of his material, but he also drew on other writings, including William Camden’s Remains of a Greater Work Concerning Britain, published in 1605, for Menenius’ fable of the belly (I.I) Though he needed no source other than Plutarch for the insurrections and corn riots of ancient Rome, similar happenings in England during 1607 and 1608 may have stimulated his interest in the story. The cumulative evidence suggests that Coriolanus, first printed in the 1623 Folio, is Shakespeare’s last Roman play, written around 1608.
In the fifth century BC, following the expulsion of the Tarquins, Rome was an aristocratically controlled republic in which power was invested primarily in two annually elected magistrates, or consuls. For many years the main issues confronting the republic were the internal class struggle between patricians and plebeians, and the external struggle for domination over neighbouring peoples. Among the republic’s early enemies were the Volsci (or Volscians), who inhabited an area to the south and south-east of Rome; their towns included Antium and Corioli. According to ancient historians, Rome’s greatest leader in campaigns against the Volsci was the patrician Gnaeus (or Caius) Marcius, who, at a time of famine which caused the plebeians to rebel against the patricians, led an army against the Volsci and captured Corioli; as a reward he was granted the cognomen, or surname, of Coriolanus. After this he is said to have been charged with behaving tyrannically in opposing the distribution of corn to starving plebeians, and as a result to have abandoned Rome, joined the Volsci, and led a Volscian army against his native city.
This is the story of conflict between public and private issues that Shakespeare dramatizes, concentrating on the later part of Plutarch’s Life and speeding up its time-scheme, while also alluding retrospectively to earlier incidents. He increases the responsibility of the Tribunes, Sicinius Velutus and Junius Brutus, for Coriolanus’ banishment, and greatly develops certain characters, such as the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius and the patrician Menenius Agrippa. The roles of the womenfolk are almost entirely of Shakespeare’s devising up to the scene (5.3) of their embassy; here, as in certain other set speeches, Shakespeare draws heavily on the language of North’s translation.
Coriolanus is an austere play, gritty in style, deeply serious in its concern with the relationship between personal characteristics and national destiny, but relieved by flashes of comedy (especially in the scenes in which Coriolanus begs for the plebeians’ votes in his election campaign for the consulship) which are more apparent on the stage than on the page. Though Coriolanus is arrogant, choleric, and self-centered, he is also a blazingly successful warrior, conspicuous for integrity, who ultimately yields to a tenderness which, he knows, will destroy him. Coriolanus is a deeply human as well as a profoundly political play.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
VOLUMNIA, Coriolanus’ mother
VIRGILIA, his wife
YOUNG MARTIUS, his son
VALERIA, a chaste lady of Rome
CITIZENS of Rome
SOLDIERS in the Roman army
Tullus AUFIDIUS, general of the Volscian army
His LIEUTENANT
His SERVINGMEN
CONSPIRATORS with Aufidius
Volscian LORDS
Volscian CITIZENS
SOLDIERS in the Volscian army
ADRIAN, a Volscian
NICANOR, a Roman
A Roman HERALD
AEDILES
A gentlewoman, an usher, Roman and Volscian senators and nobles, captains in the Roman army, officers, lictors
The Tragedy of Coriolanus
1.1 Enter a company of mutinous Citizens with staves, clubs, and other weapons
FIRST CITIZEN Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.
ALL Speak, speak.
FIRST CITIZEN You are all resolved rather to die than to famish? ALL Resolved, resolved.
FIRST CITIZEN First, you know Caius Martius is chief enemy to the people.
ALL We know’t, we know’t.
FIRST CITIZEN Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t a verdict?
ALL No more talking on’t, let it be done. Away, away. SECOND CITIZEN One word, good citizens.
FIRST CITIZEN We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome we might guess they relieved us humanely, but they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.
SECOND CITIZEN Would you proceed especially against Caius Martius?
⌈THIRD CITIZEN⌉ Against him first.
⌈FOURTH CITIZEN⌉ He’s a very dog to the commonalty.
SECOND CITIZEN Consider you what services he has done for his country?
FIRST CITIZEN Very well, and could be content to give him good report for’t, but that he pays himself with being proud.
⌈FIFTH CITIZEN⌉ Nay, but speak not maliciously.
FIRST CITIZEN I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end—though soft-conscienced men can be content to say ‘it was for his country’, ‘he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud’—which he is even to the altitude of his virtue.
SECOND CITIZEN What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.
FIRST CITIZEN If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations. He hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition.
Shouts within
What shouts are these? The other side o’th’ city is
risen. Why stay we prating here? To th’ Capitol!
ALL Come, come.
Enter Menenius
FIRST CITIZEN Soft, who comes here?
SECOND CITIZEN Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath always loved the people.
FIRST CITIZEN He’s one honest enough. Would all the rest were so!
MENENIUS
What work’s, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you
With bats and clubs? The matter. Speak, I pray you.
⌈FIRST CITIZEN Our business is not unknown to th’ senate. They have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we’ll show ’em in deeds. They say poor suitors have strong breaths; they shall know we have strong arms, too.
MENENIUS
Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest
neighbours,
Will you undo yourselves?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
We cannot, sir. We are undone already.
MENENIUS
I tell you, friends, most charitable care
Have the patricians of you. For your wants,
Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well
Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them
Against the Roman state, whose course will on
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder than can ever
Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,
The gods, not the patricians, make it, and
Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,
You are transported by calamity
Thither where more attends you, and you slander
The helms o’th’ state, who care for you like fathers,
When you curse them as enemies.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Care for us? True, indeed! They ne’er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us.
MENENIUS Either you must
Confess yourselves wondrous malicious
Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you
A pretty tale. It may be you have heard it,
But since it serves my purpose, I will venture
To stale’t a little more.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Well, I’ll hear it, sir. Yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale. But an’t please you, deliver.
MENENIUS
There was a time when all the body’s members,
Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I‘th’ midst o’th’ body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labour with the rest; where th’other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answered—
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
Well, sir, what answer made the belly?
MENENIUS
Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,
Which ne’er came from the lungs, but even thus—
For look you, I may make the belly smile
As well as speak—it tauntingly replied
To th’ discontented members, the mutinous parts
That envied his receipt; even so most fitly
As you malign our senators for that
They are not such as you.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Your belly’s answer—what?
The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye,
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,
With other muniments and petty helps
In this our fabric, if that they—
MENENIUS What then?
Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? What then?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
Should by the cormorant belly be restrained,
Who is the sink o’th’ body—
MENENIUS Well, what then?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
The former agents, if they did complain,
What could the belly answer?
MENENIUS
I will tell you,
If you’ll bestow a small of what you have tittle—
Patience—a while, you’st hear the belly’s answer.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
You’re long about it.
MENENIUS Note me this, good friend:
Your most grave belly was deliberate,
Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered:
‘True is it, my incorporate friends,’ quoth he,
‘That I receive the general food at first
Which you do live upon, and fit it is,
Because I am the storehouse and the shop
Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood
Even to the court, the heart, to th’ seat o’th’ brain;
And through the cranks and offices of man
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live. And though that all at once’—
You my good friends, this says the belly, mark me—
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
Ay, sir, well, wel
l.
MENENIUS ’Though all at once cannot
See what I do deliver out to each,
Yet I can make my audit up that all
From me do back receive the flour of all
And leave me but the bran.’ What say you to’t?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
It was an answer. How apply you this?
MENENIUS
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members. For examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o’th’ common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you,
And no way from yourselves. What do you think,
You, the great toe of this assembly?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
I the great toe? Why the great toe?
MENENIUS
For that, being one o‘th’ lowest, basest, poorest
Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost.
Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,
Lead’st first to win some vantage.
But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs.
Rome and her rats are at the point of battle.
The one side must have bale.
Enter Martius
Hail, noble Martius!
MARTIUS
Thanks.—What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
We have ever your good word.
MARTIUS
He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs
That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
Where he should find you lions finds you hares,
Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is
To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,
And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate, and your affections are
A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. He that depends
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 349
