Chapter XXVII: Part 27

"_Fourth Citizen_. It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck
but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.

"_Third Citizen_. Tear him, tear him!"

All four citizens are alike in their bloodthirsty fury. Shakespeare displays the same aristocratic contempt for the fickle crowd, whose opinion wavers with every speaker; witness its complete change of front immediately after Antony's oration. It was this feeling, possibly, which was at the bottom of his want of success in dealing with Cæsar. He probably found Cæsar antipathetic, not on the ground of his subversion of a republican form of government, but as leader of the Roman democracy. Shakespeare sympathised with the conspiracy of the nobles against him because all popular rule--even that which was guided by genius--was repugnant to him, inasmuch as it was power exercised, directly or indirectly, by an ignorant herd.

This point of view meets us again and again in _Coriolanus_; and whereas, in his earlier plays, it was only occasionally and, as it were, accidentally expressed, it has now grown and strengthened into deliberate utterance.

I am aware that, generally speaking, neither English nor German critics will agree with me in this. Englishmen, to whom Shakespeare is not only their national poet, but the voice of wisdom itself, will, as a rule, see nothing in his poetry but a love of all that is simple, just, and true. They consider that due attention, on the whole, has been paid to the rights of the people in this play; that it contains the essence, as it were, of all that can be urged in favour of either democracy or aristocracy, and that Shakespeare himself was impartial. His hero is by no means, they say, represented in a favourable light; he is ruined by his pride, which, degenerating into unbearable arrogance, causes him to commit the crime of turning his arms against his country, and brings him to a miserable end. His relations with his mother represent the sole instance in which the inhuman, anti-social intractability of Coriolanus' character relaxes and softens; otherwise he is hard and unlovable throughout. The Roman people, on the other hand, are represented as good and amiable in the main; they are certainly somewhat inconstant, but Coriolanus is no less fickle than they, and certainly less excusable. That plebeian greed of plunder which so exasperated Marcius at Corioli is common to the private soldier of all times. No, they say, Shakespeare was totally unprejudiced, or, if he had a preference, it was for old Menenius, the free-spoken, patriotic soul who always turns a cheerfully humorous side to the people, even when he sees their faults most plainly.

I am simply repeating here a view of the matter actually expressed by eminent English and American critics--a view which, presumably therefore, represents that of the English-speaking public in general.[4]

In Germany also--more particularly at the time when Shakespeare's dramas were interpreted by liberal professors, who involuntarily brought them into harmony with their own ideas and those of the period--many attempts were made to prove that Shakespeare was absolutely impartial in political matters. Some even sought to make him a Liberal after the fashion of those who, early in this century, went by that name in Central Europe.

We have no interest, however, in re-fashioning Shakespeare. It is enough for us if our perception is fine and keen enough to recognise him in his works, and we must actually put on blinders not to see on which side Shakespeare's sympathies lie here. He is only too much of one mind with the senators who say that "poor suitors have strong breaths," and Coriolanus, who is never refuted or contradicted, says no more than what the poet in his own person would endorse.

In the first scene of the play, immediately following Menenius' well-known parable of the belly and the other members of the body, Marcius appears and fiercely advocates the view Menenius has humorously expressed:

"He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,
That like not peace nor war? 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 coil ...
... Hang ye! Trust ye!
With every minute you do change a mind;
And call him noble that was now your hate,
Him vile that was your garland."

The facts of the play bear out every statement here made by Coriolanus, including the one that the plebeians are only brave with their tongues, and run as soon as it comes to blows. They turn tail on the first encounter with the Volscians.

"_Marcius_. All the contagion of the south light on you,
You shames of Rome! You herd of--Boils and plagues'
Plaster you o'er! that you may be abhorred
Farther than seen, and one infest another
Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese,
That bear the shapes of men, how have you run
From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell!
All hurt behind; backs red and faces pale
With flight and agu'd fear!" (Act i. sc. 4).

By dint of threatening to draw his sword upon the runaways, he succeeds in driving them back to the attack, compels the enemy to retreat, and forces himself single-handed, like a demigod or very god of war, through the gates of the town, which close upon him before his comrades can follow. When he comes forth again, bleeding, and the town is taken, his wrath thunders afresh on finding that the only idea of the soldiery is to secure as much booty as possible:

"See here these movers, that do prize their hours
At a crack'd drachm! Cushions, leaden spoons,
Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would
Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves,
Ere yet the fight be done, pack up:--Down with them!"

As far as Coriolanus is concerned the popular party is simply the body of those who "cannot rule nor ever will be ruled" (Act iii. sc. I). The majority of nobles are too weak to venture to oppose the people's tribunes as they should, but Coriolanus, perceiving the danger of allowing these men to gain influence in the government of the city, courageously, if imprudently, braves their hatred in order to thwart and repress them (Act iii. sc. I).

"_First Senator_. No more words, we beseech you.
_Coriolanus_. How! no more?
As for my country I have shed my blood,
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay, against those measels,
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them."

He further asserts that the people had not deserved the recent distribution of corn, for they had attempted to evade the summons to arms, and during the war they chiefly displayed their courage in mutinying. They had brought groundless accusations against the senate, and it was contemptible to allow them, out of fear of their numbers, any share in the government. His last words upon the subject are:

"... This double worship,
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,
Cannot conclude but by the yea and no
Of general ignorance,--it must omit
Real necessities, and give way the while
To unstable slightness: purpose so barr'd it follows,
Nothing is done to purpose. ..."

So, in _Troilus and Cressida_, would Ulysses, who represents all that is truly wise in statesmanship, have spoken. There is no humane consideration for the oppressed condition of the poor, no just recognition of the right of those who bear the burden to have a voice in its distribution. That Shakespeare held the same political views as Coriolanus is amply shown by the fact that the most dissimilar characters approve of them in every particular, excepting only the violent and defiant manner in which they are expressed. Menenius' description of the tribunes of the people is not a whit less scathing than that of Marcius.

"Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a butcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud, who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion" (Act ii. sc. I).

When Coriolanus's freedom of speech has procured his banishment, Menenius exclaims in admiration (Act iii. sc. I):

"_His nature is too noble for this world_:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for's power to thunder. His heart's his mouth."

Thus he is exiled for his virtues, not for his failings, and at heart they all agree with Menenius. When Coriolanus has gone over to the enemy, and their one anxiety is to appease his wrath, Cominius expresses the same view of the culpability of people and tribunes towards him (Act iv. sc. 4):

"Who shall ask it?
The tribunes cannot do't for shame; the people
Deserve such pity of him as the wolf
Does of the shepherd."

Even the voice of one of the two serving-men of the Capitol exalts Coriolanus and justifies his scorn for the love or hatred of the people, the ignorant, bewildered masses--

"... So that, if they love, they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground: therefore for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledgehe has of their dispositions; and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see't" (Act ii. sc. 2).

This is almost too well expressed for a servant; we perceive that the poet has taken no particular pains to disguise his own voice. The same man tells how well Coriolanus has deserved of his country; he did not rise, as some do, by standing hat in hand and bowing himself into favour with the people:

"... But he hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent and not confess so much were a kind of ungrateful injury; to report otherwise were a malice, that giving itself to lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it."

This uncultured mind bears the same testimony as that of the most refined and intelligent patricians to the greatness of the hero. It is not difficult, I think, to follow the mental processes from which this work evolved. When Shakespeare came to reflect on what had constituted his chief gladness here on earth and made his melancholy life endurable to him, he found that his one lasting, if not too freely flowing, source of pleasure had been the friendship and appreciation of one or two noble and nobly-minded gentlemen.

For the people he felt nothing but scorn, and he was now, more than ever, incapable of seeing them as an aggregation of separate individualities, they were merged in the brutality which distinguished them in the mass. Humanity in general was to him not millions of individuals, but a few great entities amidst millions of non-entities. He saw more and more clearly that the existence of these few illustrious men was all that made life worth living, and the belief gave impetus to that hero-worship which had been characteristic of his early youth. Formerly, however, this worship had lacked its present polemical quality. The fact that Coriolanus was a great warrior made no particular impression on Shakespeare at this period; it was quite incidental, and he included it simply because he must. It was not the soldier that he wished to glorify but the demigod. His present impression of the circumstances and conditions of life is this: there must of necessity be formed around the solitary great ones of this earth a conspiracy of envy and hatred raised by the small and mean. As Coriolanus says, "Who deserves greatness, deserves your hate."

Owing to this turn of thought, Shakespeare found fewer heroes to worship; but his worship became the more intense, and appears in this play in greater force than ever before. The patricians, who have a proper understanding of his merit, regard Coriolanus with a species of lover-like enthusiasm, a sort of adoration. When Marcius's mother tells Menenius that she has had a letter from her son, and adds, "And I think there's one at home for you," Menenius cries:

"I will make my very house reel to-night: a letter for me!

"_Virgilia_. Yes, certain, there's a letter for you; I saw't.

"_Menenius_. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of
seven years' health; in which time I will make a lip at the
physician: the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but
empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report
than a horse-drench" (Act ii. sc. I).

So speaks his friend; we will now listen to his bitterest enemy, Aufidius, the man whom he has defeated and humiliated in battle after battle, who hates him, and vows that neither temple nor prayer of priest, nor any of those things which usually restrain a man's wrath, shall prevail to soften him. He has sworn that wherever he may find his enemy, be it even on his own hearth, he will wash his hands in his heart's blood. But when Marcius forsakes Rome, and repairing to the Volscians, actually seeks Aufidius in his own home, upon his own hearth, we hear only the admiration and genuine enthusiasm which the sound of his voice and the mere majesty of his presence calls forth in the adversary who would gladly hate him, and still more gladly despise him if he could.

"O Marcius, Marcius!
Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart
A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter
Should from yond cloud speak divine things,
And say ''Tis true,' I'd not believe them more
Than thee, all noble Marcius. Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke,
And scarred the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love,
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sighed truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold" (Act iv. sc. 5).

We have, then, in this play an almost wildly enthusiastic hero-worship upon a background of equally unqualified contempt for the populace. It is something different, however, from the humble devotion of his younger days to alien greatness (as in _Henry V._), and is founded rather on an overpowering and defiant consciousness of his own worth and superiority.

The reader must recall the fact that his contemporaries looked upon Shakespeare not so much as a poet who earned his living as an actor, but as an actor who occasionally wrote plays. We must also remember that the profession of an actor was but lightly esteemed in those days, and the work of a dramatist was considered as a kind of inferior poetry, which scarcely ranked as literature. Probably most of Shakespeare's intimates considered his small narrative poems--his _Venus and Adonis_, his _Lucretia,_ &c.--his real claim to notoriety, and they would regret that for the sake of money he had joined the ranks of the thousand and one dramatic writers. We are told in the dedication of _Histrio Mastix_ (1634), that the playwrights of the day took no trouble with what they wrote, but covetously pillaged from old and new sources, "chronicles, legends, and romances."

Shakespeare did not even publish his own plays, but submitted to their appropriation by grasping booksellers, who published them with such a mutilation of the text, that it must have been a perfect terror to him to look at them. This mishandling of his plays would be so obnoxious to him, that it was not likely he would care to possess any copies. He was in much the same position in this respect as the modern author, who, unprotected by any law of international copyright, sees his works mangled and mutilated in foreign languages.

He would doubtless enjoy a certain amount of popularity, but he remained to the last an actor among actors (not even then in the first rank with Burbage) and a poet among poets. Never once did it occur to any of his contemporaries that he stood alone, and that all the others taken together were as nothing in comparison with him.

He lived and died one of the many.

That his spirit rose in silent but passionate rebellion against this judgment is obvious. Were there moments in which he clearly felt and keenly recognised his greatness? It must have been so, and these moments had grown more frequent of late. Were there also times when he said to himself, "Five hundred, a thousand years hence, my name will still be known to mankind and my plays read"? We cannot say; it hardly seems probable, or he would surely have contended for the right to publish his own works. We cannot doubt that he believed himself worthy at this time of such lasting fame, but he had, as we can well understand, no faith at all that future generations would see more clearly, judge more truly, and appraise more justly than his contemporaries. He had no idea of historical evolution, his belief was rather that the culture of his native country was rapidly declining. He had watched the growth of narrow-minded prejudice, had seen the triumphant progress of that pious stupidity which condemned his art as a wile of the devil; and his detestation of the mass of men, past, present, and to come, made him equally indifferent to their praise or blame. Therefore it pleased him to express this indifference through the medium of Coriolanus, the man who turns his back upon the senate when it eulogises him, and of whom Plutarch tells us that the one thing for which he valued his fame was the pleasure it gave his mother. Yet Shakespeare makes him say (Act i. sc. 9):

"My mother,
Who has a charter to extol her blood,
When she does praise me grieves me."

Shakespeare has now broken with the judgments of mankind. He dwells on the cold heights above the snow-line, beyond human praise or blame, beyond the joys of fame and the perils of celebrity, breathing that keen atmosphere of indifference in which the soul hovers, upheld by scorn.

Some few on this earth are men, the rest are _spawn_, as Menenius calls them; and so Shakespeare sympathises with Coriolanus and honours him, endowing him with Cordelia's hatred of unworthy flattery, even placing her very words in his mouth (Act ii. sc. 2):

"But your people
I love them as they weigh."

Therefore it is he equips his hero with the same stern devotion to truth with which, later in the century, Molière endows his Alceste, but, instead of in the semi-farcical, it is in the wholly heroic manner (Act iii. sc. 3):

"Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger
But with a grain a day. I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fair word."

We see Shakespeare's whole soul with Coriolanus when he cannot bring himself to ask the Consulate of the people in requital of his services. Let them freely give him his reward, but that he should have to ask for it--torture!

When his friends insist upon his conforming to custom and appearing in person as applicant, Shakespeare, who has hitherto followed Plutarch step by step, here diverges, in order to represent this step as being excessively disagreeable to Marcius. According to the Greek historian, Coriolanus at once proceeds with a splendid retinue to the Forum, and there displays the wounds he has received in the recent wars; but Shakespeare's hero cannot bring himself to boast of his exploits to the people, nor to appeal to their admiration and compassion by making an exhibition of his wounds:

"I cannot
Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them,
For my wounds' sake, to give their suffrage: please you
That I may pass this doing" (Act ii. sc. 2).

He finally yields, but has hardly set foot in the Forum before he begins to curse at the position in which he has placed himself:

"What must I say?
'I pray, sir '--Plague upon't! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace:--'Look, sir, my wounds!
I got them in my country's service when
Some certain of your brethren roared and ran
From the noise of our own drums'" (Act ii. sc. 3).

He makes an effort to control himself, and, turning brusquely to the nearest bystanders, he addresses them with ill-concealed irony. On being asked what has induced him to stand for the Consulate, he hastily and rashly replies:

"Mine own desert.
"_Second Citizen_. Your own desert!.
"_Coriolanus_. Ay, but not mine own desire.
"_Third Citizen_. How not your own desire?
"_Coriolanus_. No, sir, 'twas never my desire to trouble
the poor with begging."

Having secured a few votes in this remarkably tactless manner, he exclaims:

"Most sweet voices!
Better to die, better to starve,
Than crave the hire which first we do deserve."

When the intrigues of the tribunes succeed in inducing the people to revoke his election, he so far forgets himself in his fury at the insult that they are enabled to pronounce sentence of banishment against him. He then bursts into an outbreak of taunts and threats: "You common cry of curs! I banish _you_!"--which recalls how some thousand years later another chosen of the people and subsequent object of democratic jealousy, Gambetta, thundered at the noisy assembly at Belleville: "Cowardly brood! I will follow you up into your very dens."

The nature of the material and the whole conception of the play required that the pride of Coriolanus should occasionally be expressed with repellant arrogance. But we feel, through all the intentional artistic exaggeration of the hero's self-esteem, how there arose in Shakespeare's own soul, from the depth of his stormy contempt for humanity, a pride immeasurably pure and steadfast.

[1] _Plays confuted in Five several Actions_, by Stephen Gosson, 1580.

[2] It is therefore a droll error into which the otherwise admirable writer, Professor Fr. Paulson, falls in his essay, _Hamlet die Tragedie des Pessimismus (Deutsche Rundschau_, vol. lix. p. 243), when he remarks as a proof of the sensuality of Hamlet's nature: "Man erinnere sich nur seiner Intimität mit der Schauspielern; als sie ankommen, fällt sein Blick sogleich auf die Füsse der _Schauspielerin._

[3] "A Prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on this stage, in the tragedy called _The Moor of Venice_: "--

"I come unknown to any of the rest
To tell you news; I saw the lady drest.
The woman plays to day; mistake me not,
No man in gown or page in petticoat:
A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't
If I should die, make affidavit on't....
'Tis possible a virtuous woman may
Abhor all sorts of looseness and yet play,
Play on the stage when all eyes are upon her.
Shall we count that a crime, France counts an honour?"

[4] See _Shakespeare's Tragedy of Coriolanus_, by the Rev. Henry N. Hudson, Professor of Shakespeare at Boston University. Boston, 1881.

XII

_CORIOLANUS AS A DRAMA_

The tragedy of _Coriolanus_ is constructed strictly according to rule; the plot is simple and powerful, and is developed, with steadily increasing interest, to a logical climax. With the exception of _Othello_, Shakespeare has never treated his material in a more simply intelligible fashion. It is the tragedy of an inviolably truthful personality in a world of small-minded folk; the tragedy of the punishment a reckless egoism incurs when it is betrayed into setting its own pride above duty to state and fatherland.

Shakespeare's aristocratic sympathies did not blind him to Coriolanus' unjustifiable crime and its inevitable consequences. Infuriated by his banishment; the great soldier goes over to the enemies of Rome and leads the Volscian army against his native city, plundering and terrifying as he goes. He spurns the humble entreaties of his friends, and only yields to the women of the city when, led by his mother and his wife, they come to implore mercy and peace.

Coriolanus' fierce outburst when the name of traitor is flung at him proves that Shakespeare did not look upon treason as a pardonable crime:

"The fires of the lowest hell fold in your people!
Call me their traitor!--Thou injurious tribune!
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
In thy hands clutched as many millions, in
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say
'Thou liest,' unto thee, with a voice as free
As I do pray the gods" (Act iii. sc. 3).

Immediately after this his outraged pride leads him to commit the very crime he has so wrathfully disclaimed. No consideration for his country or fellow-citizens can restrain him. The forces which arrest his vengeance are the mother he has worshipped all his life and the wife he tenderly loves. He knows that it is himself he is offering up when he sacrifices his rancour on the altar of his family. The Volscians will never forgive him for delivering up their triumph to Rome after he had practically delivered up Rome to them. And so he perishes, finally overtaken by Aufidius' long-accumulated jealousy acting through the disappointed rage of the Volscians. In Plutarch Shakespeare found his plot and the chief characters of his play ready to hand. He added the individuality of the tribunes and of Menenius (with the exception of the parable of the belly). Virgilia, who is little more than a name in the original, Shakespeare has transformed by one of his own wonderful touches into a woman whose chief charm lies in the quiet gentleness of her nature. "My gracious silence, hail!" thus Marcius greets her (Act ii. sc. I), and she is exhaustively defined in the exclamation. Her principal utterances, as well as Volumnia's most important speeches, are mere versifications of Plutarch's prose, and this is why these women have so much genuinely Roman blood in their veins. Volumnia is the true Roman matron of the days of the Republic. Shakespeare has wrought her character with special care, and her rich and powerful personality is not without its darker side. Her kinship with her son is perceptible in all her ways and words. She is more prone, as a woman, to employ, or at least approve of, dissimulation, but her nature is not a whit less defiantly haughty. Her first thought may be jesuitical; her second is always violent:

"_Vol_. Oh, sir, sir, sir,
I would have had you put your power well on,
Before you had worn it out.
_Cor_ Let go.
_Vol_. You might have been enough the man you are,
With striving less to be so: lesser had been
The thwartings of your dispositions, _if
You had not showed them how ye were disposed
Ere they lacked power to cross you._
_Cor_. Let them hang.
_Vol. Ay, and burn too_" (Act iii. sc. 2).

When matters come to a climax, she shows no more discretion in her treatment of the tribunes than did her son, but displays precisely the same power of vituperation. On reading her speeches we realise the satisfaction and relief it was to Shakespeare to vent himself in furious invectives through the medium of his dramatic creations:

"_Vol_.... Hadst thou foxship
To banish him that struck more blows for Rome
Than thou hast spoken words?
_Sic_. O blessed heavens!
_Vol_. More noble blows, than ever thou wise words;
And for Rome's good. I'll tell thee what; yet go:
Nay, but thou shalt stay too: I would my son
Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,
His good sword in his hand" (Act iv. sc. 2).

A comparison between Volumnia's final appeal to her son in the last act and the speech as it is given in Plutarch is of the greatest interest. Shakespeare has followed his author step by step, but has enriched him by the addition of the most artlessly human touches:

"There's no man in the world
More bound to's mother; yet here he lets me prate
Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life
Showed thy dear mother any courtesy;
When she, (poor hen!) fond of no second brood,
Has clucked thee to the wars and safely home,
Loaden with honour" (Act v. sc. 3).

How the stern, soldierly bearing of the woman is softened by these touches with which Shakespeare has embellished her portrait!

The diction both here and throughout the play is that of Shakespeare's most matured period; but never before had he used bolder similes, shown more independence in his method of expression, nor condensed so much thought and feeling into so few lines. We have already drawn attention to the masterly handling of his material--a handling, however, which by no means precludes the intrusion of several extravagances, some heroic, some simply childish.

The hero's bodily strength and courage, for example, are strained to the mythical. He forces his way single-handed into a hostile town, holds his own there against a whole army, and finally makes good his retreat, wounded but not subdued. Even Bible tradition, in which divine aid comes to the rescue, cannot furnish forth such deeds. Neither Samson's escape from Gaza (Judges xvi.) nor David's from Keilah (1 Sam. xxiii.) can compare with this amazing exploit.

Equally unlikely is the foolishly defiant and arrogant attitude assumed by the senate, and more especially by Coriolanus, towards the plebeian party. Upon what do the nobles rely to support them in such an attitude? They have already been compelled to yield the political power of tribuneship, and it never even occurred to them to defy the sentence of banishment pronounced by these same tribunes. How comes it then that they seize every opportunity to taunt and scorn? How is it that these patricians, who have spoken so many brave words, make so poor a show of resistance when the Volscians are at their gates? They are so steeped in party spirit that their first thought, when defeat comes upon them, is to rejoice in the confusion and discomfiture the plebeians have brought upon themselves, and finally, abandoning all self-respect, they crawl to the feet of their exasperated conqueror.

The confusion of Shakespeare's authority in this part of the story would account for much.[1] According to Plutarch, Coriolanus, in the course of his victorious march from one Latin town to another, plunders the plebeians, but spares the patricians. A sudden change of public opinion occurs in Rome during his siege of Lavinium, and the popular party desires to recall Coriolanus, but the senate refuses--why, we are not told. The enemy is close upon them before a parley is agreed upon. Coriolanus offers easy terms, the admission of the Volscians to the Latin Federation being the chief stipulation. Despite the general feeling of discouragement in Rome, the senate answers haughtily that Romans will never yield to fear, and the Volscians must first lay down their arms if they desire to obtain a "favour." Directly after this defiance they make the most abject submission, and send their women as suppliants to the hostile camp.

While Shakespeare's Coriolanus has none of this consideration for his former friends, his patricians are as cowardly and incapable as the historian's. Cominius, Titus Lartius, and the others, who are originally represented as valiant men, make a very poor show at the end. Several, in short, of Plutarch's abundant contradictions have found their way into Shakespeare's play; they mark the beginning of a certain inconsequence which henceforward betrays itself in his work. From this point onwards his plays are no longer as highly finished as formerly.

I am not alluding here to the inconsistencies of his hero, for they only serve to give life and truth to his character, and the poet either represented them unconsciously, or was too ingenuous to avoid them; witness the reflection made by Coriolanus at the very moment of his rebellious disinclination to ask the suffrages of the people:

"Custom calls me to't; What custom wills, in all things should we do't, The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heapt For truth to o'er-peer" (Act ii. sc. 3).

Coriolanus is utterly unconscious that this speech of his strikes at the very root of that ultra-conservatism which he affects. The very thing he has refused to understand is, that if we invariably followed custom, the follies of the past would never be swept away, nor the rocks which hinder our progress burst asunder. To Coriolanus, what is customary is right, and he never realises the fact that his disdain for the tribunes and people has led him into a politically untenable position. We are by no means sure that Shakespeare's perceptions in this case were any keener than his hero's; but, consciously or unconsciously, it is this very inconsistency in Coriolanus' character which makes it so vividly lifelike.

_ Troilus and Cressida_ overflowed with contempt for the feminine sex as such, for love as a comical or pitiable sensuality, for mock heroics and sham military glory. _Coriolanus_ is brimful of scorn for the masses; for the stupidity, fickleness, and cowardice of the ignorant, slavish souls, and for the baseness of their leaders.

But the passionate disdain possessing Shakespeare's soul is destined to a stronger and wilder outburst in the work he next takes in hand. The outbreak in _Timon_ is against no one sex, no one caste, no one nation or fraction of humanity; it is the result of an overwhelming contempt, which excepts nothing and no one, but embraces the whole human race.

[1] The matter is interestingly discussed in Kreyssig's instructive and sympathetic work: _Vorlesungen über Shakespeare_, 1859, vol. ii. p. 110.

XIII

_TIMON OF ATHENS--HATRED OF MANKIND_

Timon of Athens has come down to us in a pitiable condition. The text is in a terrible state, and there are, not only between one scene and another, but between one page and another, such radical differences in the style and general spirit of the play as to preclude the possibility of its having been the work of one man. The threads of the story are often entirely disconnected, and circumstances occur (or are referred to) for which we were in no way prepared. The best part of the versification is distinctly Shakespearian, and contains all that wealth of thought which was characteristic of this period of his life; but the other parts are careless, discordant, and desperately monotonous. The prose dialogue especially jars, thrust as it is, with its long-winded straining after effect, into scenes which are otherwise compact and vigorous.

All Shakespeare students of the present day concur in the opinion that _Timon of Athens_, like _Pericles_, is but a great fragment from the master-hand.

The _Lyfe of Timon of Athens_ was printed for the first time in the old folio edition of 1623. Careful examination shows us that the first pages of the play of _Timon_ (which is inserted between _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Julius Cæsar_) are numbered 80, 81, 82, 81, instead of 78, 79, 80, 81, and end at page 98. The names of the actors, for which in no other case is more than the necessary space allowed, here occupy the whole of page 99, and page 100 is left blank. _Julius Cæsar_ begins upon the next page, which is numbered 109. Fleay noticed that _Troilus and Cressida_, which, as we remarked, is unnumbered, would exactly fill the pages 78 to 108. By some error, which furnishes us with another hint, the second and third pages of this play are numbered 79 and 80. Obviously it was the publisher's original intention to include _Troilus and Cressida_ among the tragedies. On its being subsequently observed that there was nothing really tragic about the play, they cast about, since _Julius Cæsar_ was already printed, for another tragedy which would as nearly as possible fill the vacant space.

Shakespeare found the material for _Timon of Athens_ in the course of his reading for _Antony and Cleopatra_. There is, in Plutarch's "Life of Antony," a brief sketch of Timon and his misanthropy, his relations with Alcibiades and the Cynic Apemantus, the anecdote of the fig-tree, and the two epitaphs. The subject evidently attracted Shakespeare by its harmony with his own distraught and excited frame of mind at the time. He was soon absorbed in it, and in some form or another he made acquaintance with Lucian's hitherto untranslated dialogue _Timon_, which contained many incidents giving fulness to the story, and from which he appropriated the discovery of the treasure, the consequent return of the parasitic friends, and Timon's scornful treatment of them.

Shakespeare probably found these details in some old play on the same subject. Dyce published, in 1842, an old drama on Timon which had been found in manuscript, and was judged by Steevens to date from 1600, or thereabouts. It seems to have been written for some academic circle, and in it we find the faithful steward and the farewell banquet with which the third act closes. In the older drama, instead of warm water, Timon throws stones, painted to resemble artichokes, at his guests. Some trace of these stones may be found in these lines in Shakespeare's play:

"_Second Lord_. Lord Timon's mad.
_Third Lord_. I feel't upon my bones.
_Fourth Lord_. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones."

In the old play, when Timon finds the gold, and his faithless mistress and friends flock around him once more, he repulses them, crying:

"Why vexe yee me, yee Furies? I protest,
and all the Gods to witnesse invocate,
I doe abhorre the titles of a friende,
of father, or companion. I curse
the aire yee breathe, I lothe to breathe that air."

He naïvely intimates a change of mind in the epilogue:

"I now am left alone: this rascall route
hath left my side. What's this? I feele through out
a sodeine change: my fury doth abate,
my hearte grows milde and lays aside its hate;"

and concludes with a still more ingenuous appeal for applause:

"Let loving hands, loude sounding in the ayre,
cause Timon to the citty to repaire."

We have no proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with this particular work. He probably used some other contemporary play, belonging to the theatre, which had proved a failure in its original form, and which both his company and his own inclinations urged him to thoroughly recast. It was not so entirely rewritten, however, that we can look upon the play as actually the work of Shakespeare--there are too many traces of another and a feebler hand; but the vital, lyrical, powerful pathos is his, and his alone.

There are two theories on this subject. Fleay, in his well-known and thorough investigation of the matter, endeavours to prove that the original scheme was Shakespeare's, but that some inferior hand amplified it for acting purposes. Fleay selected all the indubitably Shakespearian portions, and had them printed as a separate play, contending that it "not only included all that was of any value (which will scarcely be disputed), but that, on the score of intelligibility, none of the rejected speeches were needed."[1] Swinburne, who scarcely ever agrees with Fleay, also shares the belief that Shakespeare used no ready-made groundwork for his play. His first opinion was that _Timon of Athens_ was interrupted by Shakespeare's premature death, but later he inclined to the theory that, after working upon it for some time, the poet laid it aside as being little suited to dramatic treatment. Swinburne does not undervalue the work done by Shakespeare on that account, but remarks, on the contrary, that, had Juvenal been gifted with the inspiration of Æschylus, he might have written just such another tragedy as the fourth act of the drama.[2]

The theory that Shakespeare made use of a finished play which he only partially rewrote, leaving the rest in its clumsy imperfection, was originally propounded by the English critics Sympson and Knight. It was first attacked and afterwards eagerly supported by Delius, who gives the reasons for his change of opinion at great length.[3] H. A. Evans, the commentator of the Irving edition, also shares this latter view. There is no dispute between the two parties concerning the portions written by Shakespeare; the contention is simply this: Did Shakespeare remodel another man's play, or did another man complete his?

As Fleay's attempt to construct a connected and intelligible play from the Shakespearian fragments failed, because a great part of the weak and spurious matter is absolutely necessary to the coherence of the whole, it certainly seems more reasonable to accept Shakespeare as the reviser. Some of the English critics incline to the opinion that the inferior scenes were the work of the contemporary poets George Wilkins and John Day.

After a lapse of nearly 300 years it is impossible to give any decided opinion on the matter, more especially for a critic whose mother tongue is not English. In these days of occultism and spiritualism the simplest way out of the difficulty would be for some of those favoured individuals, who hold communion with the other world by means of small tables and pencils, to induce Shakespeare himself to settle the matter once for all. Meanwhile we must be content with probabilities. To those who only know the work through translations, or to those who, like Gervinus and Kreyssig, the German critics, have not devoted sufficient attention to the language, the necessity of assuming a second writer may not be so obvious. It is not impossible, of course, that the feeble, prosy, and long-winded parts were written by Shakespeare, roughly sketched in such a fit of despondency and utter indifference to detail that he could not force himself to revise, re-write, and condense; but the possibility is an exceedingly remote one. We know how finely Shakespeare generally constructed his plays, even in the first rough draft.

The drama, as it stands, presents the picture of a thoughtlessly and extravagantly open-handed nature, whose one unfailing pleasure is to give. King Lear only gave away his possessions once, and then in his old age and to his daughters; but Timon daily bestows money and jewels upon all and sundry. At the opening of the play he is, without appearing to be personally luxurious, living in the midst of all the voluptuousness with which a Mæcenas, in the gayest of all the world's gay capitals, could surround himself. Artists and merchants flock round the generous patron who pays them more than they ask. A chorus of sycophants sing his praises day and night. It is but natural that, under those circumstances, a carelessly good-natured temperament should look upon society as a circle for the exchange of friendly services, which it is equally honourable to render or receive.

He pays no heed to the faithful steward who warns him that this life cannot last. He no more disturbs himself about the melting of his money from his coffers than if he were living in a communistic society with the general wealth at his disposal.

At last the tide of fortune turns. His coffers are empty; the steward is no longer able to find him money to fling away, and Timon must go a borrowing in his turn. Almost before the report of his ruin has had time to spread, bills come pouring in, and his impatient creditors, yesterday his comrades, send messengers for their money. All his requests for a loan are refused by his former friends--one on the ground of his own poverty, while another professes to be offended because he was not applied to in the first instance, and a third will not even lend a portion of the large sums Timon has but lately lavished upon him.

Timon has hitherto been one of fortune's favourites, but now the true nature of the world is suddenly revealed to him, as it was to Hamlet and King Lear. Like theirs, but far more harshly and bitterly, his former confiding simplicity is replaced by frantic pessimism. Wishing to show his false friends all the contempt he feels for them, Timon invites them to a final banquet, and they supposing that he has recovered his wealth, attend with excuses on their lips for their recent behaviour. The table is sumptuously spread, but the covered dishes contain only warm water, which Timon disdainfully flings in the faces of his guests.

He cuts himself adrift from all intercourse with mankind, and retreats to the woods to lead the solitary life of a Stoic. The half-jesting retirement of Jaques in _As You Like It_, and his dismissal of all who trouble his solitude, are here carried out in grim earnest.

It is not for long that he remains poor, for he has hardly begun to dig for the roots on which he lives than he finds treasure buried in the earth. Unlike Lucian's misanthrope, who rejoices in the possession of gold as a means of securing a life free from care, Shakespeare's Timon sickens at the sight of his wealth. Neither does he care for the honourable amends made by his countrymen. We learn it so late in the day that we can scarcely believe that Timon was formerly a skilful general, who had done good service to his country. This feature is taken from Lucian, and the character of the luxurious Mæcenas would have gained in interest and nobility if this trait had been impressed upon us earlier in the play. The senate, meanwhile, being threatened with war, offers Timon the sole command. He proudly rejects the overtures made by these misers and usurers in purple, and even remains unsoftened by the faithful devotion of his steward. He anathematises every one and all things, and returns to his cave to die by his own hand.

The non-Shakespearian elements of the play do not prevent his genius and master-hand from pervading the whole, and it is easy to see how this work grew out of the one immediately preceding it, to trace the connecting links between the two plays.

When Coriolanus is exasperated by the ingratitude of the plebeians, he joins the enemies of his country and people, and becomes the assailant of his native city. When Timon falls a victim to the thanklessness of those he has loaded with benefits, his hatred embraces the whole human race. The contrast is very suggestive. The despair of Coriolanus is of an active kind, driving him to deeds and placing him at the head of an army. Timon's is of the passive sort: he merely curses and shuns mankind. It is not until the discovery of the treasure determines him to use his wealth in spreading corruption and misery that his hatred takes a semi-practical form. This contrast was not an element of the drama until Shakespeare made it so.

The whole conduct of his Alcibiades forms a complete parallel to that of Coriolanus, and here again the connection between the two plays is obvious. Shakespeare found a brief account of the mutual relations of Timon and Alcibiades in North's translation of Plutarch's "Life of Antony," together with a description of Timon's good-will towards the general on account of the calamities that he foresaw he would bring upon the Athenians. The name of Alcibiades would not recall to Shakespeare, as it does to us, the most glorious period of Greek culture, and such names as Pericles, Aristophanes, and Plato--he generally gives Latin names to his Greeks, such as Lucius, Flavius, Servilius, &c.; nor did it represent to him the unrivalled subtlety, charm, instability, and reckless extravagance of the man. He would read Plutarch's comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus, in which the Greek and Roman generals are considered homogeneous, and for Shakespeare Alcibiades was merely the soldier and commander; on that account he let him occupy much the same relation to Timon that Fortinbras did to Hamlet.

Where Timon merely hates, Alcibiades seizes his weapons; and when Timon curses indiscriminately, Alcibiades punishes severely but deliberately. He does not tear down the city walls and put every tenth citizen to the sword, as he is invited to do; he only seeks vengeance on his personal enemies and those whom he considers guilty. But Timon, like Hamlet, generalises his bitter experiences, and loathes everything that bears the form or name of man. When Athens sends to entreat him to take the command and save the city from the violence of Alcibiades, he is harder and colder, and a hundred times more bitterly relentless, than Coriolanus, who, after all, could bow to entreaty, or than Alcibiades, who is satisfied with a strictly limited vengeance. Timon's loathing of life and hatred of humanity is consistent throughout.

Like _Coriolanus_, this play was undoubtedly written in a frame of mind which prompted Shakespeare less to abandon himself to the waves of imagination than to dwell upon the worthlessness of mankind, and the scornful branding of the contemptible. There is even less inventiveness here than in _Coriolanus_: the plot is not only simple, it is scanty--more appropriate to a parable or didactic poem than a drama. Most of the characters are merely abstractly representative of their class or profession, _e.g._ the Poet, the Painter, the servants, the false friends, the flatterers, the creditors and mistresses. They are simply employed to give prominence to the principal figure, or rather, to a great lyrical outburst of bitterness, scorn, and execration.

In the poet's description of his work in the first scene of the play, Shakespeare has indicated his point of view with unusual precision:

"I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment. . .
. . . His large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts."

He unfolds an allegory in which Fortune is represented as enthroned upon a high and pleasant hill, from whose base all kinds of people are struggling upwards to better their condition:

"Amongst them all
Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed,
One do I personate of lord Timon's fame,
Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;
Whose present grace to present slaves and servants
Translates his rivals."

The Painter justly observes that the allegory of the hill and the enthroned Fortune could be equally well expressed in a picture as a poem, but the Poet continues:

"When Fortune, in her shift and change of mood,
Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,
Which laboured after him to the mountain's top,
Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot."

Shakespeare has defined his purpose here as clearly as did Daudet, some hundreds of years later, in the first chapter of his _Sappho_, in which the whole course of the story is symbolised in the ever-increasing difficulty with which the hero mounts the stairs, carrying the heroine to the highest story of the house in which he lives. The bitterness of Shakespeare's mood is shown in the distinct indication that the Poet and the Painter, rogues and toadies as they are, stand in the first ranks of their professions, and cannot, therefore, claim the excuse of poverty. It is significant of the dramatist's low opinion of his fellow-craftsmen--not one of them is mentioned in his will--that he should make his Poet most eloquent in condemnation of his own peculiar faults. Hence Timon's ejaculation in the last act:

"Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work
Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men?"

In _Timon_, as in _Coriolanus_, Shakespeare put his own thoughts and feelings into the mouths of the various characters of the play. Falseness and ingratitude are the subjects of the most frequent allusion. They were uppermost in the poet's mind at the time, and the changes are rung upon these vices by the Epicurean and the Cynic, by servants and strangers, before and after the climax. Even the fickle Poet serves, as we have seen, as spokesman for the all-prevailing idea; and the Painter, who is every whit as worthless, says with droll irony (Act v. sc. I):

"Promising is the very air o' the time: it opens the eyes of expectation: performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable: performance is a kind of will or testament, which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it."

If there was one thing Shakespeare loathed above another, it was the lifeless ceremony which disguises hollowness and fraud. Early in the play (Act i. sc. 2) Timon says to his guests: