Let the first budger die the others slave, And the gods doom him after. - Caius Marcius CoriolanusShakespeare turns to 5th century BC Roman history for a deeply serious drama depicted in combat scenes between fierce enemies, conflicts between patricians and the plebeians, and contrasting perspectives within family. His treatment of war, statesmen, citizens and family life is surprisingly unusual in that the common denominator in all, the hero, is motivated by a powerful mother-son dynamic. Caius Marcius, a hot-tempered young man of unbridled brute strength, a militant idealist incapable of acting beneath his idea of honor or integrity, who rigidly believes "brave death outweighs bad life, And that his countrys dearer than himself," who has shown no fear but only insensitivity to battle wounds, returns from the Volscian war as the valiant hero in the siege of Corioles, to the only two women of his affection, his mother and his wife. Whereas other men find glory in their unswerving valor, he finds the thrill of glory through his mother's joy, that she should hear him praised and see him crowned: "To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he returned his brows bound with oak."Volumnia, his mother, part of the feminine - though not the sentimental - strand in the play, stands out as a formidable character: a military mother whose patriotism and pride in the bravery of the family's great soldier reign supreme over the shedding of his blood, even if it would have cost his life, for "then his good report should have been my son. I therein would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Martius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action." The honor of this hero reflects greatly on dreams of her own glory.Newly surnamed 'Coriolanus,' superior as a warrior for that is his nature, he is contemptuous of any life other than on the field or of any occupation but that of battle, who neither fully understands himself nor anyone else for that matter, such that leadership of the populace and compromise are beyond his skill, has not the temperament for a consul position, despising and distrusting of the political role his mother entreats him:The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggars tongue Make motion through my lips, and my armed knees,Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath received an alms! I will not dot, Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth, And by my bodys action teach my mind A most inherent baseness.Against his own judgment, he acquiesces to her wishes but in so doing, reveals how much he hates these people who revolt against the laws, the 'plebs' from whom he must beg for votes; his arrogant lack of understanding for their plight in turn fuels their contempt of him, resulting in a trial and the call for his exile. In his most venomous rebuke in the play, Coriolanus spews:You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate As reek oth rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air: I banish you. And here remain with your uncertainty. Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts; Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes, Fan you into despair! Have the power still To banish your defenders, till at length Your ignorancewhich finds not till it feelsMaking but reservation of yourselves, Still your own foes, deliver you As most abated captives to some nation That won you without blows! Despising For you the city, thus I turn my back. There is a world elsewhere.Coriolanus's downfall is borne by vengeful wrath as he leaves Rome a turncoat to fight for the opposition alongside his Volscian foil, Aufidius. Alas, the once defender of Rome is eventually betrayed very much in Roman style (when one thinks of Julius Caesar); betrayed by many in Shakespeare's version, but most tragically and unwittingly by one in particular, whom he calls 'mother,' for it is in the midst of Aufidius's camp she beseeches her son to spare their city. His response shows a wilting resolve:Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars, Ill frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius, Were you in my stead would you have heard A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius?Shakespeare takes imaginative license in bringing the female influence to the foreground laying blame in part at her feet! Softened by the pleas of the mother he could not deny, blinded so by uncontrolled fury he could not foresee the total effect of his action, Coriolanus is called 'traitor' by Aufidius, is ambushed and stood no chance at all. Thou hast done a deed whereat Valour will weep. A volatile yet sympathetic creature of boyish recklessness lacking perhaps the self-awareness and insight of an adult, falls victim in the end to his tempestuous nature. Coriolanus actually is not a difficult play to read even with the hero's sharply vituperative dialogue. Shakespeare's theatrical plotting around a piece of Roman history was fairly straight forward, lacking the complexity or twisted scenarios in his more notable plays and therein, not too hard to interpret. Oddly, for that very reason it may be one pick in the canon to read for those initially apprehensive of the great bard.

Caius Marcius Coriolanus on the public he would rule: 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.The fires i th lowest hell fold in the people!His opponents the demagogic tribunes, though usually scheming privately, can also work up a good harangue:Did you perceive He did solicit you in free contempt When he did need your loves, and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies No heart among you?I sought out Coriolanus because I was in the mood for choler and tirade, for troubles, faction, strife and doom. But as the pages passed I began to regret the scarcity of Shakespeares comic prosehis low jokes, his bawdy bonhomie and good-humored stink; those spicy sentences, Emerson called them. Coriolanus is harsh and dry, the principals loud and pissed-off (in the 1930s, the play sparked brawls at the Comédie-Française; and for years it was banned in West Germany). The extreme, brazen and thus kindred styles of Coriolanus (ill-educated virtus) and of his enemies (specious, leveling modestia) dominate both the starveling wit (soon mob fury) of individual plebesCare 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.and the prose repartee (soon partisan cursing) of Menenius, a louche raconteur still essentially guided by republican virtue (the best kind of social critic, really):I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't...one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning: what I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are--I cannot call you Lycurguses--if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it...and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you you have good faces.This portioning of voices, I imagine, reflects an observation: the sufferers and the witty spectators are alike whelmed, dwarfed or duped by the passionate intensity of contending powers. Shakespeares last tragedy is another of his insuperable meditations on the humanities of statecraft. The other day in a bookstore I was thumbing through a copy of Machiavellis Discourses on Livy, and found his reflections on the historical Coriolanus thin stuff next to Old Will. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot's spirit! my throat of war be turn'd, Which quired with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lulls asleep! the smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up The glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees, Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath received an alms! I will not do't, Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth And by my body's action teach my mind A most inherent baseness.And his mom, Volumnia, wins the Dam of Sparta award for this line: Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'st it from me...

I'm told Coriolanus, the person, is unlikeable, but I happen to like him. I don't even think he's a right-wing bastard, just shy, awkward and misunderstood. It's his severe self-effacement that makes him hate publicity. Who wants to stand in the market and exhibit your wounds in a stupid political stunt? And his thickheadedness, the fact he has no idea when to use that soldierly bluntness and when to keep his trap shut, is a naivety I like against the politics of Rome. He's a soldier, yes, but at least he isn't a politician. He always was more at home with his enemy. It's a scream how Coriolanus and Aufidius are so wrapped up in each other: they pant for the next instalment of the insult/flattery exchange, 'So what did Aufidius say about me?' 'And Coriolanus mentioned me?' They belong together. If only he'd stuck to his guns and not called off the march on Rome. The end works as tragedy for me, no question: Coriolanus is destroyed by that which he serves. With a mother like his he never stood a chance. They made him the perfect soldier, and he is, but then they reject him for what he is. There's certainly satire of militarism (the warmonger women of Rome, the infamous butterfly speech), and I think the play says a lot about soldiers and the military, and about civilians' use and abuse of soldiers. I notice that, more than the politics. I'd call it a soldier's tragedy.