From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (Buffalo, NY: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 528-29.
[This section was prepared and proofread by Deborah Hill.]
CORIOLANUS
1607-8
He was a man too full of passion and choler, and too much given over to self-will and opinion, as one of a high mind and great courage, that lacked the gravity and affability that is gotten with judgment of learning and reason, which only is to be looked for in a governor of State and that remembered not how wilfulness is the thing of the world, which a governor of a commonwealth, for pleasing, should shun, being that which Plato called "solitariness;" as in the end, all men that are uilfully given to a self-opinion and obstinate mind, and who will never yield to other's reason but to their own remain without company, and forsaken of all men. For a man that will live in the world must needs have patience, which lusty bloods make but a mock at. So Marcius, being a stout man of nature, that never yielded in any respect, as one thinking that to overcome always and to have the upper hand in all matters, was a token of magnanimity and of no base and faint courage, which spitteth out anger from the most weak and passioned part of the beast, much like the matter of an impostume: went home to his house, full freighted with spite and malice against the people. -- NORTH, SIR THOMAS, 1579, tr. Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus.
The Tragedy of "Coriolanus" is one of the most amusing of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Vergilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting varriety, and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune, fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is perhaps too much bustle in the first act, and too little in the last. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakespeare's Plays.
To reduce the history of Coriolanus into a play was one of those labours, which our dramatic Hercules has achieved in a most wonderful manner; but after all, the labour is scarcely worth the pains, for, except the singularly noble character of Coriolanus, there is nothing correctly great in the piece. -- DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 340.
Shakespear has in this play shown himself well versed in history and state affairs. "Coriolanus" is a storehouse of political commonplaces. Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's "Reflections," or Paine's "Rights of Man," or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin, and to have spared no occasion of bating the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 49.
In Volumnia, Shakspeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus is the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother Volumnia, and the power she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story, "she saved Rome and lost her son." Her lofty patriotism, her patrician haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit, are exhibited with the utmost power of effect, yet the truth of female nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigour, is without harshness. -- JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1832, Characteristics of Women.
The subject of "Coriolanus" is the ruin of a noble life through the sin of pride. If duty be the dominant ideal with Brutus, and pleasure of a magnificent kind be the ideal of Antony and Cleopatra, that which gives tone and colour to Coriolanus is an ideal of self-centred power. The greatness of Brutus is altogether that of the moral conscience; his external figure does not dilate upon the world through a golden haze like that of Antony, nor bulk massively and tower like that of Coriolanus. Brutus venerates his ideals, and ill venerates himself; but this veneration of self is in a certain sense disinterested. A haughty and passionate personal feeling, a superb egoism, are with Coriolanus the sources of weakness and of strength. -- DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1875-80, Shakspere: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art, p. 282.
A loftier or a more perfect piece of man's work was never done in all the world than this tragedy of "Coriolanus." -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 188.
There is more unity in the tragedy of "Coriolanus" than in either of the other Roman plays; yet, grand and powerful as it is, its tragical interest is less than that of "Julius Caesar," and its poetical merit, less than that of "Antony and Cleopatra." There is something hard about it, both in sentiment and in style. The delineation of social and personal pride is not a subject to evoke much sympathy or emotion, and although it may in its course reach sublime heights, its sublimity is wholly independent of moral greatness. Of all Shakespeare's greater works, this is the most difficult to construe; the unintelligibility of several passages is doubtless due to some corruption of the text, but besides this, the general style is exceedingly obscure, and overloaded with metaphorical and elliptical expressions. Even the great scene between Coriolanus and his mother is not of uniform excellence. -- STAPFER, PAUL, 1880, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, tr. Carey, p. 454.
"Coriolanus" was directly derived from Sir Thomas North's famous version of Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans," the book to which Shakespeare was indebted also for his "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," and, to some extent, for "Timon of Athens," and which has been fittingly described as "most sovereign in its dominion over the minds of great men in all ages." North's monumental version is one of the masterpieces of English prose, and no better proof exists than a comparison of the play with its original. Shakespeare has borrowed North's very vocabulary, and many of his most striking effects; so closely does he follow the whole history that North's prose may actually assist in restoring a defective passage. -- GOLLANCZ, ISRAEL, 1896, ed. Temple Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Preface.
Links to other sites on the Web
Get your own Free Home Page