Coriolanus (play)

Information about Coriolanus (play)

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"Venturia at the Feet of Coriolanus" by Gaspare Landi
Photo courtesy of The VRoma Project.


The Tragedy of Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Caius Martius Coriolanus.

Source

Coriolanus was largely based on the Life of Coriolanus as it was described in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans and Livy's Ab Urbe condita.

Date and text

It was originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Details of the text, such as the uncommonly detailed stage directions, lead some Shakespeare scholars to believe the text was prepared from a theatrical prompt book.

Performance history

Like some of Shakespeare's other plays (All's Well That Ends Well; Timon of Athens), there is no recorded performance of Coriolanus prior to the Restoration. After 1660, however, its themes made it a natural choice for times of political turmoil. The first known performance was Nahum Tate's bloody 1682 adaptation at Drury Lane. Seemingly undeterred by the earlier suppression of his Richard II, Tate offered a Coriolanus that was faithful to Shakespeare through four acts before becoming a Websterian bloodbath in the fifth act. A later adaptation, John Dennis's The Invader of His Country, or The Fatal Resentment, was booed off the stage after three performances in 1719. The title and date indicate Dennis's intent, a vitriolic attack on the Jacobite 'Fifteen. (Similar intentions motivated James Thomson's 1745 version, though this bears only a very slight resemblance to Shakespeare's play. Its principal connection to Shakespeare is indirect; Thomas Sheridan's 1752 production at Smock Alley used some passages of Thomson's. David Garrick returned to Shakespeare's text in a 1754 Drury Lane production.[1]

The most famous Coriolanus in history is Laurence Olivier, who first played the part triumphantly at the Old Vic Theatre in 1937 and returned to it to even greater acclaim at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1955. In that production, he famously performed Coriolanus's death scene by dropping backwards from a high platform and being suspended upside-down (without the aid of wires), being reminiscent of Mussolini.

Other famous performances of Coriolanus include Ian McKellen, Gerard Butler, and Ralph Fiennes.

Characters

  • Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus
  • Menenius Agrippa, Senator of Rome
  • Cominius, Titus Lartius, generals
  • Volumnia, Coriolanus's mother
  • Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife
  • Young Martius, Coriolanus's son
  • Valeria, a lady of Rome
  • Sicinius Velutus, Junius Brutus, tribunes of Rome
  • Citizens of Rome
  • Soldiers in the Roman Army
  • Tullus Aufidius, general of the Volscian army
  • Aufidius's Lieutenant
  • Audidius's Servingmen
  • Conspirators with Aufidius
  • Volscian Lords
  • Volscian Citizens
  • Soldiers in the Volscian army
  • Adrian, a Volscian
  • Nicanor, a Roman
  • A Roman Herald
  • Messengers
  • Aediles
  • A gentlewoman, an usher, Roman and Volscian senators and nobles, captains in the Roman army, officers, lictors

Synopsis

The play opens in Rome, shortly after the expulsion of the Tarquin kings. There are riots in progress, after stores of grain were withheld from ordinary citizens. The rioters are particularly angry at Caius Martius, a brilliant Roman general whom they blame for the grain being taken away. The rioters encounter a patrician named Menenius Agrippa, as well as Caius Martius himself. Menenius tries to calm the rioters, while Martius is openly contemptuous, and says that the plebeians were not worthy of the grain because of their lack of military service. Two of the tribunes of Rome, Brutus and Sicinius, privately denounce Martius. He leaves Rome after news arrives that a Volscian army is in the field.

The commander of the Volscian army, Tullus Aufidius, has fought with Martius on several occasions, and considers him a blood enemy. The Roman army is commanded by Cominius, with Martius as his deputy. While Cominius takes his soldiers to meet Aufidius' army, Martius leads a sally against the Volscian city of Corioles. The siege of Corioles is initially unsuccessful, but Martius is able to force open the gates of the city, and the Romans conquer it. Even though he is exhausted from the fighting, Martius marches quickly to join Cominius and fight the other Volscian force. Martius and Aufidius meet in single combat, which only ends when Aufidius' own soldiers drag him away from the battle.

In recognition of his incredible bravery, Cominius gives Martius the honorific surname of "Coriolanus". When they return to Rome, Coriolanus' mother Volumnia encourages her son to run for consul. Coriolanus is hesitant to do this, but he bows to his mother's wishes. He effortlessly wins the support of the Roman Senate, and seems at first to have won over the commoners as well. However, Brutus and Sicinius scheme to undo Coriolanus, and whip up another riot in opposition to him becoming consul. Faced with this opposition, Coriolanus flies into a rage, and rails against the concept of popular rule. He compares allowing plebeians to have power over the patricians to allowing "crows to peck the eagles". The two tribunes condemn Coriolanus as a traitor for his words, and order him to be banished.

After being exiled from Rome, Coriolanus seeks out Aufidius in the Volscian capital, and tells them that he will lead their army to victory against Rome. Aufidius and his superiors embrace Coriolanus, and allow him to lead a new assault on the city.

Rome, in its panic, tries desperately to persuade Coriolanus to halt his crusade for vengeance, but both Cominius and Menenius fail. Finally, Volumnia is sent to meet with her son, along with Coriolanus' wife and child, and another lady. Volumnia succeeds in dissuading her son from destroying Rome, and Coriolanus instead concludes a peace treaty between the Volscians and the Romans. When Coriolanus returns to the Volscian capital, conspirators organised by Aufidius kill him for his betrayal.

Critical appraisal

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A.C. Bradley described this play as "built on the grand scale," [2], like King Lear and Macbeth, but it differs from those two masterpieces in an important way. The warrior Coriolanus is perhaps the most opaque of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, rarely pausing to soliloquize or reveal the motives behind his prideful isolation from Roman society. In this way, he is less like effervescent, reflective Shakespearean heroes/heroines such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear and Cleopatra and more like figures from ancient classical literature such as Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas -- or, to turn to literary creations from Shakespeare's time, the Marlovian conqueror Tamburlaine, whose militaristic pride finds a descendant in Coriolanus. Readers and playgoers have often found him an unsympathetic character, although his caustic pride is strangely, almost delicately balanced at times by a reluctance to be praised by his compatriots and an unwillingness to exploit and slander for political gain. The play is less frequently produced than the other tragedies of the later period, and is not so universally regarded as "great." (Bradley, for instance, declined to number it among his famous four in the landmark critical work Shakespearean Tragedy.)

The political overtones in Coriolanus are rich and nuanced. The drama especially and thoroughly examines the divide between plebeian democracy (favored in the play by the villains Brutus and Sicinius) and the proponents of autocracy (represented by the Coriolanus and the consulship itself).

As in Hamlet, an important relationship of the play is between a mother and her son, but in Coriolanus, this relationship is both less fractured and devoid of the sexual tension that exists between Gertrude and the Danish prince. Indeed, the most intriguing tension resides, not in the hero's relationship with any woman, but in that which he maintains with his nemesis (and eventual ally) Aufidius. Marital and romantic concerns, so prominent in Antony and Cleopatra, are almost wholly absent. The play maintains a serious tone throughout, without any of the familiar comic scenes, fools, or other stock devices commonly used by Shakespeare to lighten his tragedies. What comedy there is in the play may reside in Shakespeare's tart portrayal of the hypocrisy, cowardice, and fickleness of the plebeians.

T.S. Eliot famously proclaimed Coriolanus' superior to Hamlet in The Sacred Wood, in which he calls the former play, along with Antony and Cleopatra, the Bard's greatest tragic achievement. Eliot alludes to Coriolanus in a passage from his own The Waste Land.

Bertolt Brecht also adapted Shakespeare's play in 1952–5, as Coriolan for the Berliner Ensemble. He intended to make it a tragedy of the workers, not the individual, and introduce the alienation effect; his journal notes that he found many of his own effects already in the text, and he considered staging the play with only minimal changes. The adaptation was unfinished at Brecht's death in 1956; it was completed by Manfred Wekwerth and Joachim Tenschert and staged in Frankfurt in 1962.[3]

Coriolanus has the distinction of being among the few Shakespeare plays banned in a democracy in modern times.[4] It was briefly suppressed in France in the late 1930s because of its use by the fascist element.[5]

References

1. ^ F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 116.
2. ^ Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy
3. ^ Brown, Langdon, ed. Shakespeare Around the Globe: A Guide to Notable Postwar Revivals (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986): 82.
4. ^ Maurois, Andre. The Miracle of France. Henri Lorin Binsse, trans. New York: Harpers, 1948: 432
5. ^ Parker 123

External links

Further reading

  • Clark Lunberry. “In the Name of Coriolanus: The Prompter (Prompted).” Comparative Literature 54: 3 (Summer 2002): 229-241.
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Comedies All's Well That Ends Well | As You Like It| The Comedy of Errors| Cymbeline | Love's Labour's Lost| Measure for Measure| The Merchant of Venice| The Merry Wives of Windsor| A Midsummer Night's Dream| Much Ado About Nothing| Pericles, Prince of Tyre| The Taming of the Shrew| The Tempest| Twelfth Night, or What You Will| The Two Gentlemen of Verona| The Two Noble Kinsmen| The Winter's Tale
Histories King John | Richard II| Henry IV, Part 1| Henry IV, Part 2| Henry V| Henry VI, part 1| Henry VI, part 2| Henry VI, part 3| Richard III| Henry VIII
Poems Sonnets | Venus and Adonis| The Rape of Lucrece| The Passionate Pilgrim| The Phoenix and the Turtle| A Lover's Complaint
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''Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was possibly a legendary Roman general who lived in the 5th century BC.

In later ancient times, it was generally accepted by historians that Coriolanus had lived, and a consensus narrative story of his life appeared, retold by leading historians
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''Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was possibly a legendary Roman general who lived in the 5th century BC.

In later ancient times, it was generally accepted by historians that Coriolanus had lived, and a consensus narrative story of his life appeared, retold by leading historians
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Titus Livius (traditionally 59 BC–AD 17[1]), known as Livy in English, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental History of Rome, Ab Urbe condita
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Ab Urbe condita (literally, "from the city, having been founded") is a monumental history of Rome, from its legendary founding (ab Urbe condita, dated to 753 BC by Varro and most modern scholars). The book was written by Titus Livius (around 59 BC–AD 17).
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First Folio is the term applied by modern scholars to the first published collection of William Shakespeare's plays; its actual title is Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.
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The prompt book, also called promptbook, transcript, or sometimes simply "the book," is the copy of a production script that contains the information necessary to create the production from the ground up.
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All's Well That Ends Well is a comedy by William Shakespeare, and is often considered one of his problem plays, so-called because they cannot be easily classified as tragedy or comedy.
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The Life of Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare about the legendary Athenian misanthrope Timon (and probably influenced by the eponymous philosopher, as well), generally regarded as one of his most obscure and difficult works.
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English Restoration, or simply The Restoration, was an episode in the history of Britain beginning in 1660 when the English monarchy, Scottish monarchy and Irish monarchy were restored under King Charles II after the English Civil War.
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Nahum Tate (1652 – 1715) was an Irish Protestant poet, hymnist and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692.

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Nahum Tate was born in Dublin in 1652, the son of Faithful Teate, an Irish clergyman[1]
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Thomas Sheridan (1719 – 1788) was an Irish stage actor, an educator, and a major proponent of the elocution movement. He received his M.A. in 1743 from Trinity College in Dublin, and was the godson of Jonathan Swift.
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David Garrick born (19 February 1717 in Hereford – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson.
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Laurence Olivier

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