Four Plays

by John Osborne

  CORIOLANUS: What’s this? You ask me?

  VOLUMNIA: Your son, your wife, myself, we all do.

  CORIOLANUS: Stop. Don’t put this display on for me. You vulgarise yourselves. Don’t ask me to give up my army or make terms with Rome, Rome’s workers. Don’t tell me I’m unnatural. Above all, don’t reason with me.

  VOLUMNIA: Oh, no more, no more. You’ve said you won’t give us anything. All we’ve already asked is denied. But we still ask all the same. Even if it does do no more than harden your outline for the world to make sure. So listen to us.

  CORIOLANUS: Aufidius and all you other Volscians, listen. Mark for yourselves: for I hear nothing from Rome that’s in private. (To VOLUMNIA.) Well?

  VOLUMNIA: Would you seriously have us look on silently and watch the husband, son, the father, tear his country’s bowels out! For myself, son, I don’t intend to wait to see the outcome of this war. If I can’t persuade you to your own natural good grace, then trample on me first.

  VIRGILIA: Yes, and me too, and this boy. So much for keeping your name.

  YOUNG MARCIUS: He won’t trample on me. I’ll run away and then when I’m bigger, I’ll go back and fight him.

  (CORIOLANUS clutches MARCIUS’s shoulders)

  CORIOLANUS: It is not necessary for me to see any of you. I have sat here too long.

  VOLUMNIA: No, don’t go in this way. You know, my son, the general, the end of any war’s uncertain, but this much is certain, that if you do overcome Rome, there will be no name like Coriolanus written in it for you. All that will be said is fine he may have been but his last expedition was no less of a ruin than his own country. Think of a name for that! Have you nothing to say? Do you think it a good thing for a man like yourself only to remember wrong? Virgilia, speak to him. Your crying means nothing to him. Speak up, boy: perhaps your tears can move him a bit more than we can. He lets me stand in front of him like a beggar. You have never shown your mother any courtesy, or perhaps this is it. When all she’s thought of is what you have done and what you are and how you shall be. Your glory has been all I’ve lived for. Say what I ask for is not proper and then turn me back; then, then you can call yourself honest. Look at him, he can’t even look at me, he turns away… The name of Coriolanus means more to him than ours; so this is the end. We will get back to Rome, and I with the rest of them. This boy doesn’t know what he’s asking for but you’d refuse him everything. Come, Virgilia. This man’s mother must have been a Volscian, his wife is in Corioli and his child no more than a stand-up chance. Tell us to go. I shall say nothing until our city’s under fire. Then – then, I’ll have things to say!

  (CORIOLANUS holds his mother by the hand, silent.)

  CORIOLANUS: Oh, Mother, Mother! What have you done? Look, everyone watches this scene and laughs at every single element in it. Oh Mother, Mother! Oh! You’ve won a skilful victory for Rome, but, for your son, believe it, oh, believe it! – you don’t know what you’ve done to him. But perhaps you do, and you were right to have done it. So be it…

  (To AUFIDIUS) Aufidius, though I can’t make war too well, I can patch up the peace. Tell me, Aufidius, in my place, would you have done less? Or granted less? Aufidius?

  AUFIDIUS: I’m most touched. (He sounds cold)

  CORIOLANUS: I dare say. It was no small thing to win me over but you will advise me. I know – I won’t go to Rome. I’ll stay here with you. We can stick together. Oh, Mother! Virgilia! Soon we will all have a drink together and we’ll think about other things. We shall not after all be gone forever, in spite of what’s happened. Come and have something to eat and drink with us, both of you. You deserve a shrine built to you; all the fire power in Italy and the entire world could not have made this peace…

  (They go out.)

  Scene 9

  Rome. Conference room. MENENIUS and SICINIUS. Enter high-ranking POLICE OFFICER.

  POLICE OFFICER: Sir, I would advise you both to return home while you can. Sicinius, madam, the Plebians have got your fellow tribune and hung him upside down. If Marcius’s ladies don’t come back with something, things are going to be very bad indeed. He’s dying by inches at this moment.

  (Enter another POLICE OFFICER.)

  SICINIUS: Well?

  SECOND POLICE OFFICER: The news looks good after all. The ladies seem to have had their way. The Volscians are moving out now, already. There’s no Marcius! Rome’s even starting to look a bit like its old self!

  SICINIUS: Is this true? Are you certain?

  SECOND POLICE OFFICER: As certain as one can be, madam. Listen!

  (Sounds of celebration outside.)

  MENENIUS: I’ll go and meet Volumnia and the wife. They are worth all of this, this city, full of politicians like myself, yes and tribunes. They must have a real welcome.

  (They go. Noise of celebration grows.)

  Scene 10

  Corioli. AUFIDIUS’s headquarters. AUFIDIUS with LIEUTENANTS.

  AUFIDIUS: Get the others in here. It’s him I accuse. Now! Move.

  (Exit LIEUTENANT, to be follwed by several more entering)

  Come in.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: And how’s our general?

  AUFIDIUS: Feeling like any man betrayed feels.

  SECOND LIEUTENANT: The people must know where they are, where they stand, where you stand.

  AUFIDIUS: I know. I gambled and I gambled and I gambled! I seem to be his follower to every one, not partner. It was as if I’d been a mercenary to a mercenary.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: It had to be admitted some time. We all marvelled at it. And at the very end when we had got Rome itself and everything was open to us –

  AUFIDIUS: That was it. How could I be so weak! Just for a few tears. I’ve seen enough. They can be as cheap as lies. He sold out without an hour’s labour. Well, he shall get the reward. Listen!

  (Outside drums, trumpets and shouts)

  FIRST LIEUTENANT: You slunk into your own time like a nobody and he comes home the conquering hero.

  SECOND LIEUTENANT: Do what you feel. We all feel it.

  AUFIDIUS: Say no more. Here are the others.

  (Enter various other OFFICIALS of the Volscian Army)

  OFFICIALS: Welcome back.

  AUFIDIUS: I don’t deserve welcome. Do you know what’s happened?

  OFFICIALS: We do.

  FIRST OFFICIAL: There has been a terrible yielding here – and there’s no excuse for it.

  AUFIDIUS: Here he comes. Hear him for yourself. (Enter CORIOLANUS, accompanied by drum and colours)

  CORIOLANUS: My friends! I’ve come back and I’m still one of you. Still unseduced, unseduced by my past loves as when I left you still under your command… As you know, I got us to the gates of Rome itself. We have brought back all kinds of concessions, more than I could ever have hoped for and we’ve made peace; peace with honour to us and what is nothing more than shame to the Romans! See what I’ve brought back!

  (He makes to hand to them a document)

  AUFIDIUS: Don’t read it, my friends. Don’t bother to read it. Just tell the traitor how he’s abused you all.

  CORIOLANUS: Traitor! What’s this!

  AUFIDIUS: Yes, traitor, Marcius!

  CORIOLANUS: Marcius!

  AUFIDIUS: Yes, Marcius, Caius Marcius. Do you think I’ll let you get away with that name you pilfered, Coriolanus, in Corioli?

  CORIOLANUS: You’re a true patriot, Aufidius, for a true patriot is a good hater. You come from a good-natured people and you have many virtues but they are of the heart, a cold one too, not of the head. In your passions and affections you are sincere but in understanding; you are all hypocrites, every one. When you begin to calculate the consequences, self-interest prevails over everything. You have wit, genius, eloquence, imagination, affection: but you have no understanding and consequently no standard of thought or action. Your strength of mind cannot keep up with the pace of your so-called warmth of feeling Or your apparent quickness. Your animal spirits run away with you. Oh yes, there is something crude
and undigested and discordant in almost everything you do or say. You have no system, no abstract ideas. You are everything by starts, and nothing long. You are a wild lot. You hate any law that imposes on your understanding or any kind of restraint at all. You are all fierceness and levity. If you have any feelings, when they aren’t excited by novelty or opposition, they grow cold and stagnant. If your blood’s not heated by passion, then it turns to poison.

  AUFIDIUS: I saw him, I watched him like a twist of rotten silk. He whined and roared away your victory! We all blush to look at him.

  CORIOLANUS: Dear God, do you hear this!

  AUFIDIUS: Don’t bring in God, you boy of tears.

  CORIOLANUS: Ha!

  AUFIDIUS: No more.

  CORIOLANUS: You penurious liar… You’ve made my heart too big! ‘Boy!’ Oh, you servant. Forgive me – this is the first time ever – what you see now must give this churlish bitch the lie.

  ALL: Cool down, both of you. Let’s talk. (Etc)

  CORIOLANUS: Cut me to pieces, Volscians. Men, and men like children. ‘Boy’! You filth in my own place. Yes, me. I was like an eagle in your dovecote. I fluttered your precious Volscians in Corioli! Alone… I did it. ‘Boy’?

  AUFIDIUS: You see!

  ALL: Kill him! Put it in! Get on with it! (Etc.)

  (They all close in on him.)

  CORIOLANUS: Oh, that I had him. With six Aufidiuses and more – his whole tribe. I’d have them ALL! (AUFIDIUS howls like a dog and everyone advances on CORIOLANUS who is quickly overwhelmed and disappears under the weight of his colours. Presently they all stand back and look upon the body)

  AUFIDIUS: My friends, you cannot know even in this rage what he did to me, let alone to you. You should be glad he’s gone. Even so, he was like some of us, unable to forgive wrongs when they seemed to darken death or night, to defy power, which seems omnipotent…neither to change, nor falter, nor repent even this…this to him was to be good, great and joyous, beautiful and from this alone, yes, life, joy, empire and victory.

  LIEUTENANT: Well, let’s make the best of it.

  AUFIDIUS: (Looking up) Take him up. Help me, three of you; I’ll be one.

  (Sound of a helicopter. Four ropes attached to a stretcher descend from above the proscenium arch)

  AUFIDIUS: He widowed and unchilded many a one in this city and we’re the poorer for it. Still someone may remember. Help me.

  (AUFIDIUS and three LIEUTENANTS lay the body of CORIOLANUS onto the stretcher and cover it with a blanket. It ascends slowly and they watch it and then go out. All that remains on the stage is the lone figure of a piper playing a lament)

  The End.