Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Actually, the institutions of the Republic developed only gradually and received their familiar form only by 367 b.c. However, later Roman historians tended to push back several of the features into the undocumented period before 390 b.c. to give them the added sanctity of extra ancient-ness. The history of the tribunate during the fifth century b.c. is quite obscure and the supposed first tribunes listed by Plutarch (he names only two out of the five and Shakespeare follows him in this) make no mark in actual history.

  Is Junius Brutus a descendant or relative of the Lucius Junius Brutus who helped found the Republic (see page I-210)? From the name one would suppose so, yet if he were, he would be a patrician and it is of the essence that the tribunes are plebeians. Or was there some dim feeling on the part of the legendmakers that since a Junius Brutus was one of the first two consuls of the Republic, a Junius Brutus ought also to be one of the first two tribunes?

  From the standpoint of the play, of course, it doesn't matter.

  … the Volsces ."..

  In any case, civil broils must now be buried in the face of a foreign menace. A messenger hurries on the scene asking for Marcius. He says:

  The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.

  —Act I, scene i, line 225

  At this early stage in their history, the Romans were still fighting for the control of Latium, that section of west-central Italy that occupies a hundred miles of the coast southeast of Rome. It is the home of the Latin language.

  The Volscians were the tribes occupying the southeastern half of Latium. Under the last kings of Rome, they along with the other Latin tribes had been part of a loose confederacy headed by Rome, and it may be that all were more or less under Etruscan control. With the expulsion of the Roman kings and the weakening of the Etruscan hold, the Latin tribes squabbled among themselves. The Volscians fought with the Romans throughout the fifth century b.c. and were in the end defeated. In Marcius' time, however, the long duel was only beginning,

  A deputation of senators comes to see Marcius now. He is their best warrior and they need his help. Marcius has no illusions that the fight will be an easy one, for the Volscians have a gallant leader, Tullus Aufidius. A senator says:

  Then, worthy Marcius,

  Attend upon Cominius to these wars.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 238-39

  Cominius is one of the two consuls of Rome at this time. They were the chief executives of the city, having replaced the office of the ousted king. The consuls were elected for a one-year term, since the Romans felt that one year was insufficient for any consul to build up a large enough personal following to serve in making himself a king.

  Two consuls were chosen, rather than one, since the rule was that no action could be taken without agreement between them. It seemed reasonable to suppose that neither consul could take any real steps toward tyranny without the other jealously stepping in to stop him.

  The chief duties of the consuls were to be in charge of the armed forces of Rome and to lead the Roman armies in warfare. Cominius, as consul, was to be the army leader, and Marcius, who was not a consul, would have to be a subordinate officer.

  The senators are clearly not at all certain that Marcius will agree to this; a commentary on his sullen spirit of self-absorption. Cominius says hastily:

  It is your former promise.

  —Act I, scene i, line 239

  This time, at least, Marcius gives in at once and all sweep off the stage, leaving behind only the two newly appointed tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus. They had come in with the senators but had remained silent. Left alone, they make it clear that they resent Marcius' pride and his harsh taunts.

  Sicinius wonders that Marcius can bear to serve as an underling with Cominius commanding, and Brutus suggests a cynical interpretation, saying that Marcius shrewdly schemes to avoid responsibility in case of disaster:

  For what miscarries

  Shall be the general's fault, though he perform

  To th'utmost of a man; and giddy censure

  Will then cry out of Marcius "O, if he

  Had borne the business!"

  —Act I, scene i, lines 267-71

  Nowhere in the play, however, is Marcius given credit for so devious a nature. Brutus is simply putting his own style of shrewdness into Marcius' mind. What is much more likely is that Marcius doesn't care who commands and who does not, whom Rome praises and whom she does not. All he wants is a chance to fight so that, in any office, he can win his mother's praise.

  … to guard Corioles

  The fast Roman response to the Volscian threat forces the Volscians to hasten their own plans. Tullus Aufidius is consulting with the Volscian council and one of the Volscian senators says:

  Noble Aufidius,

  Take your commission; hie you to your bands:

  Let us alone to guard Corioles.

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 25-27

  This council of war is taking place in Corioli (or Corioles), a town whose location is now uncertain, and this, in itself, is one of the signs that the story of Coriolanus is legendary. At the time of the traditional date of this war, 493 b.c. (a year after the plebeian uprising, although Shakespeare, in the interest of speeding the action, makes it take place immediately afterward), what records we have indicate that Corioli was not a Volscian city but was in alliance with that portion of Latium which was under Roman leadership.

  It is very likely that the tales of Coriolanus that were dimly remembered had to be adjusted to account for the name. Why should Marcius be remembered as Coriolanus unless he had played a key role in the conquest of that city? So the conquest was assumed.

  And why was Marcius eventually given the name of Coriolanus if it was not because of the conquest of the city? No one will ever know. For that matter, can we be certain that such a man as Coriolanus ever existed at all?

  … Hector's forehead…

  Now, at last, Marcius' mother, Volumnia, is introduced. So is his wife, Virgilia. Virgilia is, however, a shrinking girl, much dominated by her mother-in-law, who is pictured as the ideal Roman matron. She is a most formidable creature and we cannot help but wonder if Marcius' little-boy love for her is not intermingled with more than some little-boy fear.

  Shakespeare makes it plain that Marcius has become something that is his mother's deliberate creation. Even when he was young, she tells her daughter-in-law proudly, all she could think of was how honor (that is, military glory) would become him. She says:

  To a cruel war I sent him,

  from whence he returned,

  his brows bound with oak

  —Act I, scene iii, lines 14-16

  (An oak wreath was the reward granted a soldier who had saved the life of a fellow soldier.)

  Virgilia timidly points out that Marcius might have been killed, but Volumnia says, grimly:

  I had rather had eleven die nobly

  for their country than one voluptuously

  surfeit out of action.

  —Act I, scene iii, lines 25-27

  And when Virgilia gets a little queasy over Volumnia's later reference to possible blood on Marcius' brow, Volumnia then says, in scorn at the other's weakness:

  Away, you fool! It [blood] more becomes a man

  Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,

  When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier

  Than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood

  —Act I, scene iii, lines 42-46

  In later centuries the Romans invented a legend to the effect that they were descended from the Trojan hero Aeneas (see page I-20), and it is natural to read this back into early Roman history and to imagine that the early Romans identified strongly with the Trojans. Hector (page I-81) was Troy's greatest fighter.

  … a gilded butterfly.. .

  Volumnia's bloodthirsty and single-minded approach to the notion of military honor makes it plain why Marcius, trained by her, is what he is. But can it be that Shakespeare approves of this sort of mother and fi
nds the product of her training to be admirable? Let's see what follows immediately!

  Valeria, a friend of the family, comes to visit, and describes something she has observed that involves Marcius' young son. She says:

  1 saw him run after a gilded butterfly;

  and when he caught it, he let it go again;

  and after it again; and over and over he comes,

  and up again; catched it again;

  or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas,

  he did so set his teeth, and tear it.

  —Act I, scene iii, lines 63-68

  The promising child, in other words, plays cat-and-mouse with a butterfly and ends by killing it in a rage. But why a butterfly? Surely nothing can be as pretty, harmless, and helpless as a butterfly. It isn't possible that we can feel sympathetic for a child that would deliberately and sadistically kill one. And this is clearly the product of Volumnia's bringing up.

  But can we really apply the unreasoning action of a young child to the behavior of the adult Marcius? Surely we can, for Shakespeare makes certain that we do. What does he have Volumnia say to Valeria's tale? She says, calmly:

  One on's father's moods.

  —Act I, scene iii, line 70

  It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare admires neither Volumnia's philosophy nor the individuals it produces.

  … another Penelope…

  Valeria wants Virgilia to come out on the town with her but Virgilia will not. Like a loyal wife, she will stay at home till her husband is back from the wars. Valeria says, cynically:

  You would be another Penelope;

  yet, they say, all the yarn she spun in

  Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.

  —Act I, scene iii, lines 86-88

  Penelope is the very byword of the faithful wife. Married to Ulysses (see page I-90) but a couple of years when he went forth to Troy, she remained faithful for twenty years in his home island of Ithaca, till he returned. In the last several years, he was rumored dead and many suitors clamored for her hand. She put them off with one ruse or another, the most famous being that she wanted first to finish a shroud she was weaving for Ulysses' aged father, Laertes. Every day she wove and every night she ripped out what she had woven, keeping it up a long time before she was caught. The story of Penelope and the suitors makes up a major portion of Homer's Odyssey.

  … to Cato's wish …

  The Roman forces under Marcius and Titus Lartius (another valiant Roman) are meanwhile laying siege to Corioli. They are met with Volscian resolution and are beaten back at the first assault. Marcius, yelling curses at his soldiers in his usual manner, rushes forward and manages to get inside the city gates, which close behind him. He is alone in an enemy city.

  Titus Lartius, coming up now, hears the news, and speaks of him as already dead. He says, apostrophizing the as-good-as-dead Marcius:

  Thou wast a soldier

  Even to Cato's wish, not fierce and terrible

  Only in strokes; but with thy grim looks and

  The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds

  Thou mad'st thine enemies shake …

  —Act I, scene iv, lines 57-61

  This is taken almost verbatim from Plutarch, where that biographer describes Marcius as a soldier after Cato's heart. The Cato referred to is Marcus Porcius Cato, often called Cato the Censor (an office which he held with vigor), for he was a model of old-fashioned Roman virtue. He was completely honest and completely bound to duty, but he was cold, cruel, sour, miserly, and narrow-minded. He was heartless to his slaves and lacked any tender feelings for his wife and children. As censor, he was perfectly capable of fining a Roman patrician for kissing his own wife in the presence of their children.

  It was perfectly proper for Plutarch to quote Cato in this connection, for he lived over three centuries after Cato. Shakespeare, however, is guilty of negligence in placing the remark in Lartius' mouth without making the necessary modification, for it now becomes an amusing anachronism. The siege of Corioli took place, according to legend, in 493 b.c., and Cato wasn't born till 243 b.c., two and a half centuries later (and didn't become censor till 184 b.c.).

  Caius Marcius Coriolanus

  But Marcius is not dead. If the tale were not a legend, magnified in the telling, even if we allow a kernel of truth, he would undoubtedly be dead. Perhaps this part of the tale of Marcius was inspired by a similar incident in the life of Alexander the Great.

  In 326 b.c. Alexander was conducting his last major campaign in what was then called India, but in a region which is now part of Pakistan. They laid siege to a town called Multan, which is located about 175 miles southwest of Lahore, on one of the chief tributaries of the Indus. In a fever of excitement, Alexander pressed forward to the walls and managed to climb them and leap into the city without looking to see whether the army was following or not.

  For a while, he was alone in the midst of enemies. One or two men managed to join him and when Alexander was struck down and seriously wounded they protected him until the army made its way into the city. Alexander survived, but it was a very near thing.

  Marcius does better than that, however. No one joins him and he appears on the battlements, bleeding, but not seriously wounded. Only now does the rest of the army, in a fever of enthusiasm, storm the city and take it.

  Marcius then leads part of the army to join Cominius and together they defeat the Volscians under Tullus Aufidius.

  Now the army rings with praises for Marcius, but when Titus Lartius tries to put those praises into words, Marcius says, gruffly:

  Pray now, no more. My mother,

  Who has a charter to extol her blood,

  When she does praise me grieves me.

  —Act I, scene ix, lines 13-15

  This sounds like modesty, like superhuman modesty, but is it? Marcius is a loner. His universe consists of himself alone, plus his mother. He is willing to enter Corioli alone, to fight alone against an army; the soldiers under his command are but a source of annoyance to him.

  Why, then, should he want their praise? Who are they to praise him? Far from this being a true mark of modesty, it might rather be interpreted as the sign of a most confounded arrogance. Only his mother has a right to praise him and even that is not entirely acceptable to him. In the remark, further, he naively reveals the fact that he places his mother (as far as the right of praise is concerned) above Rome.

  Nevertheless, he is not to get away without some mark of favor. Cominius, the consul, gives him an added name, saying:

  … from this time,

  For what he did before Corioles, call him,

  With all th'applause and clamor of the host,

  Caius Marcius Coriolanus.

  —Act I, scene ix, lines 62-65

  It was a Roman custom, when one of their generals won a signal victory over some particular foreign enemy, to give him an additional name taken from the conquered place or people. Sometimes the individual was thereafter known by his new title almost exclusively.

  The most renowned case of this in Roman history is that of Publius Cornelius Scipio. Scipio was the final conqueror of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, the greatest and most feared enemy Rome ever had in the days of its greatness, and certainly one of the most remarkable captains in the lamentable history of warfare. The battle in which Scipio finally overcame Hannibal was fought at Zama in 202 b.c., a city in northern Africa. As a consequence, the title "Africanus" was added to Scipio's name.

  "Coriolanus" is formed in the same fashion. From this point on in the play, his speeches are marked "Coriolanus" rather than "Marcius" and it is the former name that is given to the tragedy itself.

  … Lycurguses. ..

  Back at Rome, the citizens are still waiting for news from the army. The two tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius, cannot help but hope for a little bad news, since that would weaken the position of Marcius (they don't yet know his new title).

  Menenius, the friend of Marciu
s and one who, because of his age, considers himself practically a foster father of the younger man, is also onstage and rails wittily at the uncomfortable tribunes, who lack the verbal agility to stand up to him. Menenius is particularly annoyed because the tribunes call Marcius proud, and at one point he says to them:

  Meeting such wealsmen as you are-

  I cannot call you Lycurguses.. .

  —Act II, scene i, lines 54-56

  "Wealsmen" are statesmen, a term Menenius uses ironically, since he considers them anything but that. And lest their denseness allow them to mistake his remark for a compliment, he specifically denies that they can be compared to Lycurgus.

  Lycurgus, according to tradition, was a Spartan leader of the ninth century b.c. who devised the social, economic, and political system under which the Spartans lived in ancient times. The Spartan aristocracy devoted themselves to a military regime that made even the Roman system look pallid. (Actually it was developed in the seventh century b.c. and may have been attributed to the legendary Lycurgus to give it greater authority.)