SHAKESPEARE’S knowledge of the Coriolanus story probably dated from his schooldays. The story is told by Livy (Bk 2) and Shakespeare could have refreshed his memory of it when Philemon Holland’s translation of it was published in 1601. But the fable of the Belly and the Body’s Members is to be found not only in Livy, but also in Erasmus’ Copia, in Aesop’s Fables, and in a collection by Caxton, as well as in Plutarch’s Lives. In later years Shakespeare came to know the versions given by Sidney in his Defence of Poesy and by Camden in his Remaines, as we can tell from verbal echoes of both;1 and, of course, he read the whole of the Coriolanus story as given by Livy and Plutarch. At some time between 1588 and 1608, he had come across William Averell’s Meruailous Combat of Contrarieties in which the fable was used as a warning against sedition at the time of the Spanish Armada.2 The actual vocabulary of Menenius’ fable owes more to Averell’s version than to any other. Averell’s Tongue, for example, asks:
Will you see the patterne of a gluttonous Pantrey, then looke vpon the Bellie, for he is a smoking kitchin of variable viands … the breathing Lunges, like blowing bellowes, lie by the Liuer as by a Forge … and the entrayles like a sinck conuay the filth downe the Fundament…. Wherefore Bretheren, and fellow members, let vs not be subiect to two such Cormorants, which regarde not our benefit, but theyr owne profit.
(f. A3v)
Apart from the identical words – ‘viands’, ‘lungs’, ‘sink’, and ‘cormorant’ are all used in Shakespeare’s retelling of the fable (I. i. 94–152) – ‘Pantrey’ may have suggested ‘cupboarding’ and ‘storehouse’. On other pages of Averell’s pamphlet all the significant words used by Menenius appear, except ‘smile’ (105) and ‘gulf’ (96).
The story of Coriolanus was frequently used in the years immediately before Shakespeare wrote his play by writers on political theory. Some account of these will give an idea of the climate of opinion to which the play was a deliberate contribution.
In 1604 a volume was published entitled Foure Paradoxes, or Politique Discourses, containing two essays by Thomas Digges, and two by Dudley Digges, his son, and the stepson of Shakespeare’s testamentary overseer.3 One of Dudley’s essays is in praise of the soldier’s profession. In the other he argues ‘That warre sometimes’ is ‘lesse hurtfull, and more to be wisht in a well gouernd State than peace’. War, he declares, is better than ‘luxurious idleness’ and peace is apt to lead to
dissention, when idlenesse ministers each actiue humour fit occasion of working, to the indangering of diseased, to the distempering of most healthfull bodies, when quiet security giues busie heads leasure to deuide the common-wealth into contentious factions.
(p. 102)
With this may be compared the dialogue on the advantages of war in Coriolanus, IV. v. Digges proceeds to discuss the use of war as a means of curing internal dissensions, his main example being the story of Coriolanus, taken directly from North’s Plutarch, though with the insertion of one phrase from Livy:4
These enmities haue been instruments in most Countries ouerthrowes, they ouertake vs in our securitie like secret fiers in the night, and ate therefore more to be feared, they steale on vs by degrees hidden in the deepnesse of our rest, like the consumption in a body vnpurged, vnexercised, that is indeed lesse painefull yet proues more mortall than most diseases … a perfect remedie to dissipate the other, if wee bee not to our selues defectiue; to wit, forreine warre, a souereigne medicine for domesticall inconueniences… The generall daunger will soone withdraw mens mindes from intestine garboiles to resist the generall mischief, both which appeared in that wise proceeding of the Senate of Rome in Coriolanus time that by this means appeased all diuisions, euen then when as Liuie obserues heat of contention betwixt the people and nobilitie had made, Ex vna ciuitate duas…. For the populousnesse of that Citie, by reason of their peace occasioning a dearth and famine, and their idlenesse stirring vp lewd felowes to exasperate the desperate need and enuious malice of the meaner sort, against the nobility, whose pride and luxurie grown through sloth intolerable, caused them to contemne and iniure the poorer people, in the end the fire brake forth hard to be quenched, and then the Senate hauing as I may say bought wit by this deare experience, were at length enforced to flie to this medicine, which wisely applied before, had well preuented all those causes, and their vnhappie effectes. Then they resolued on a warre with the Volsces to ease their City of that dearth, by diminishing their number, and appease those tumultuous broyles, by drawing poore with rich, and the meane sort with the Nobilitie, into one campe, one seruice, and one selfesame daunger: sure means to procure sure loue and quietnesse in a contentious Commonwealth, as that of Rome was at that time.
Yet euen then there wanted not home tarrying hous-doues, two peace-bred tribunes Sicimus [sic] and Brutus, hindred that resolution calling it crueltie, and it may be some now will condemne this course, as changing for the worse: some that wil much mislike a body breaking-out should take receipts of quick-siluer or mercurie, that may endanger life: yet they cannot but knowe euen those poysons outwardly applied are souereigne medicines to purge and clense, and therefore hauing a good Physition, I must professe, I thinke it much better to take yeerely Physicke.
(pp. 103–5)
We cannot be sure that Shakespeare had read Foure Paradoxes, though he might have done so out of neighbourly interest. In Coriolanus he uses the metaphor of ‘breaking out’ in three places, though his use of it is not confined to this play:
Proceed by process,
Lest parties – as he is belov’d – break out,
And sack great Rome with Romans.
(III. i. 314–16)
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity.
(IV. iv. 17–18)
This lies glowing, I can tell you, and is almost mature for the violent breaking out.
(IV. iii. 22–3)
The image in the third passage is taken from a fire, in the first and second from either fire or disease. Digges uses the phrase in both senses, as indeed Shakespeare had done in earlier plays; but before 1604 and as late as The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare thought of war in the same medical terms as Dudley Digges – an idea made easy to his contemporaries by the theory of correspondences between the body politic and the microcosm,5 as well as by the fact that physicians had frequent recourse to bleeding. As many critics have observed, there is a great deal of disease imagery in Coriolanus. More significant is the stress laid by Shakespeare in this play and in Antony and Cleopatra on the glory of the ‘royal occupation’ of soldiering. Plutarch, it is true, tells us that ‘in those dayes valliantnes was honoured in Rome aboue all other vertues’ (p. 238); but Dudley Digges devotes a whole essay to this theme. Plutarch, again, mentions that the Consuls hoped ‘by the meanes of forreine warre, to pacifie their sedition at home’ (p. 243); but Digges uses this as one of his main arguments in favour of war, and it is his sole reason for retelling the Coriolanus story. Shakespeare, of course, was familiar with the idea: Henry IV, it will be recalled, advises Hal to ‘busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels’. Coriolanus rejoices in the war because it will enable Rome to vent her ‘musty superfluity’, an argument mentioned by Digges, but only indirectly by Plutarch.
Digges, who does not refer to Volumnia, adopts an attitude not unlike hers – exemplified in her remarks on her son’s wounds (I. iii. 29–42) – as in a passage in the third essay, in which he prophesies that in the future the country will
motherlike respect those sonnes that are hir Champions, and seeke to perchase her ease with painefull industrie, her honor with effusion of their bloude, her safety with losse of life.
(p. 95)
Although, therefore, Shakespeare could have developed his conception of the play from Plutarch’s Lives, Digges may well have contributed to the atmosphere of the play with his praise of the military hero, his claim that ‘the discommoditie of our long peace opprest by luxurie’ is ‘worse farre than warre’, and his retelling of the Coriolanus story as an example of the way foreign wars can be used to cure sedition.6
Another book, published two years later, contains a significant reference to Coriolanus. This is Richard Knolles’s translation of Bodin’s Six Bookes of a Commonweale.7 Bodin, after describing ‘how dangerous a matter it is in euerie commonweale to banish a great man’, goes on to mention Coriolanus who ‘cast into exile, brought the Romans to such extremitie, as that had he not suffered himselfe to haue beene ouercome with the prayers and teares of his mother, and the other women whom the Romans had sent vnto him, the Roman State had there taken end’. Bodin has a long analysis of the disadvantages of democracy, including the fickleness and ingratitude of the people. This context illustrates the main significance the Coriolanus story would have for most of Shakespeare’s original audience.
A third book, also published in 1606, has some links with Coriolanus. This was entitled A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique. Wherein out of the principles of Nature, is set forth the true forme of a Commonweale, with the dutie of Subiects, and the right of the Soueraigne.8 As its title implies, this book by Edward Forset is an elaborate comparison between the human body and the body politic, its starting point being Menenius’ fable:
This similitude was both fitly and fortunatly enforced by Menenius Agrippa, who being imployed in the appeasing and persuading of the seditious reuolting commons of Rome, did by a very tale of this proportionable respectiuenes of the parts in mans body, and the mutualitie of kindnes and ayd afforded from each to other, so sensibly shew them their errour, that surseasing their malignant enuy wherewith they were inraged against their rulers (whom they accounted as the idle belly that swallowed the labors of their hands) they discerned at the last that their repining against, and their pining of that belly, whence was distributed vnto them their bloud and nourishment, necessarily tended to their owne destruction; and were thereuppon forthwith reclaymed into their bounds of obedience.9
(To the Reader)
Forset compares the king both to the head and the heart; and just as Averell wrote to advocate patriotic unity at the time of the Armada, so Forset attacks the gunpowder conspirators (pp. 51–2). In the last section of the book there is a discussion of the diseases of the commonwealth, magistrates being compared to physicians and surgeons; and in view of the numerous disease images in Coriolanus it is interesting to observe Forset’s extended comparison between the diseases of the body and those of the commonwealth:
Diseases arise as in the body naturall by distemper of humours; so in the politicall, by disorder of manners: and as in the bodie naturall they doe hinder, peruert, and corrupt the orderly actions of nature; so in the politicall they do impeach, infringe, and resist the proceedings and regiment of a iust gouernance.
(p. 72)
Forset proceeds to discuss the remedies in both cases:
As against all diseases of the naturall bodie the skill and application of Phisicke is ordained; so against the corruption of manners in the politicall bodie, wholesome lawes be prouided: whereof where the more bee made, the more it argueth the sinfullnesse of that people, as the vse of much phisicke argueth much distemper… So the lawes and prouisions against offences in the State (like to a well directed Phisicke) are to range vnder the regiment of the Soueraigne with a seruiceable subalternation, recognizing him as the principall Phisicion for the redressing or remedying the maladies of the bodie politique.
(p. 73)
Constables, bailiffs, jurors, ‘and such like’ act as physicians to the civil body; and just as the incompetence of some doctors makes people regard their ‘professions and practise, as vnnecessarie’, so there are many
that taking offence at the vnsufficiencie or corruptions of some magistrats and officers of iustice, either vtterly denie the lawfulnesse of their calling, or at the least spurne and repine at their administration.
(pp. 74–5)
Just as the physician should endeavour to keep people healthy, and cure them when they fall ill, so the function of a magistrate ‘is either to hold all vpright when the state is in a good case, or to recouer and recure that which shall become vnsound’ (p. 75). Like the physician, the magistrate has different remedies according to the nature of the trouble – ‘drying consumers, to waste away the superfluous confluence of any annoying matter’, ‘attractiue openers, to loose and draw forth any inwardly infixed festerings’, ‘dispersers and dissoluers of any gathered together or swelling putrifactions’, ‘repercussiues, to suppresse and repell all beginning outrages’, and ‘expellers of all that is hurtfull and burdenous, cleansing the verie fountaynes of euill’ (p. 76). Forset argues that the faults of great men are most dangerous, as disease in an important part of the body causes the whole body to be
vexed with giddinesse and tumults: So when great men of a better condition, and higher degree, shall grow humerous, opinionate, and factious … they doe not only seduce the vnskilfull and vnruly Commons, but also traine on with their suggestion of colourable causes, some officers of publique trust … to adhere vnto them in their misconceiuing aduentures, till all be endaungered by such mutinous confusion… The forenoted diseases setled in the nobler parts, are the more principally to be prouided for, and it is ordinarie to withdraw the anguish thereof, to some of the lesse principall, yea though it should be with torments of incision, burning or ligature.
(pp. 80–1)
Just as the patient has to be prevented from eating hurtful food, so ‘traiterous complotters and the vngouemed’ have to be restrained from ‘riches and honor’ – a mild punishment of traitors! But where a disease is ‘particular only to one part’, amputation is necessary:
the part wherunto such paine sticketh & is so affixed, as that it cannot be remoued or remedied, were better to be pulled out, cut of, & disseuered from the bodie: howbeit much extremitie is to be abidden, and many waies for healing are to be tried befor it com to so hard a passe, as to harden the heart to endure such violence.
(p. 84)
So when Sicinius says that Coriolanus is a ‘disease that must be cut away’, Menenius pleads:
O, he’s a limb, that has but a disease –
Mortal, to cut it off: to cure it, easy.
(III. i. 296–7)
A few lines later Sicinius repeats the idea of amputation:
The service of the foot,
Being once gangren’d, is not then respected
For what before it was.
There is a good deal of disease imagery in the early acts of the play, but the significant images from the present standpoint, those relating to the sickness of the commonweal, are concentrated into the first scene of the third act. Coriolanus speaks of the contagion of democracy:
those measles
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them.
(III. i. 78–80)
He speaks of those that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish
To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That’s sure of death without it.
(III. i. 153–5)
Brutus, like Forset, realizes that desperate diseases of the state require desperate remedies:
Sir, these cold ways,
That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous
Where the disease is violent.
(III. i. 220–2)
A senator urges Coriolanus to leave the patricians ‘to cure this cause’, and Menenius adds:
For ’tis a sore upon us
You cannot tent yourself.
(III. i. 235–6)
Brutus speaks of Coriolanus’ treason as an infection (III. i. 310). Shakespeare had previously referred to the sickness of the state (e.g. in 2 Henry IV, Hamlet, and Macbeth) but Forset’s book may have retriggered this imagery. At least we may suppose that some of Shakespeare’s audience would have known about ‘diseases setled in the nobler parts’ and perhaps have been more critical of Coriolanus’ conduct than some Shakespearian commentators have been.10 On the other hand they would have had little sympathy with democratic ideas. Machiavelli alone seems to have condemned Coriolanus, without attempting to mitigate his guilt.11
Two more books may be mentioned briefly. Laurentius Grimaldus Goslicius, in his Commonwealth of Good Counsaile, as the 1607 translation was called, discussing natural patriotism, mentions that ‘euen the wicked and most vnnatural subiects, attempting the subuertion of their country’ have ‘stayed their handes from performing so wicked an enterprise’ as soon as they see their native soil. He illustrates the point by showing how easily Veturia (i.e. Shakespeare’s Volumnia) dissuaded her son from destroying Rome; but, with the ambivalence of most writers on Coriolanus, he commends his piety in pardoning his country ‘which through the crueltie of the Tribunes, at that time persecuting the Nobilitie, had beene to him vnthankefull’. Goslicius declares that it is dangerous for magistrates to ‘be chosen by the multitude’ and deplores the creation of the office of tribune:
In Rome likewise the multitude not induring the dignitie of the Senate … in the ende created Tribunes, by whose furie and insolency, the authoritie of the Senate was diminished, and by sedition and troubles brought the state to vtter destruction.
(pp. 32, 67, 80–1)
Finally, William Fulbecke in The Pandectes of the Law of Nations (1602) alludes to the banishment of Coriolanus in his chapter on the evils of democracy:
It is against the nature of the people to beare rule: for they are as vnfitte for regiment, as a mad man to giue counsaile… This beast of many heades hath a threeforked tongue: with the one part it tickleth the eares of them whom they flatter: with the other it licketh their woundes: with the last, and sharpest it pricketh their hearts… The wayward people may be iustly compared to a bundell of thornes, which will beare vp a great man, but will pricke him if he leane or lie vpon it.
(ff. 29, 30v, 31)
Attempts have been made to link the writing of Coriolanus with the Midlands insurrection of 1607, and certainly the increased emphasis given to the shortage of corn suggests that this had a topical significance to Shakespeare’s original audience. It is clear from the books that we have been considering that the poet was writing within a tradition, that he was less one-sided than most writers on the subject, and that the play exhibits, as Coleridge pointed out, the wonderful impartiality of Shakespeare’s politics. Nevertheless, I believe that Andrew Gurr has shown that by the alterations made by Shakespeare in the Menenius fable, and his elimination of the riots about usury, he ‘tightened up the parallel with the Midlands food riots and gave the belly metaphor a more precise relevance’. He refers to Zeeveld’s comparison of the defenders of common rights in the House of Commons with the Tribunes in the play and he concludes that
What Shakespeare seems to have done is to take two quite separate events and link them through the body-politic concept so that they independently confirm the fallaciousness of the organic analogy.
Perhaps Shakespeare was reacting against the extravagancies of Edward Forset.12
In any case Shakespeare takes the main incidents of his play from Plutarch’s Life, though he selects and rearranges them. He omits, for example, the departure of the common people from Rome, which Plutarch gives as the occasion for Menenius Agrippa’s fable. The people agree to return to Rome on condition that they are allowed to elect Tribunes to safeguard their interests; but in the play Brutus and Sicinius are already established in their offices. Shakespeare likewise omitted the plan to colonize Velites with the surplus Roman population – a more humane method than using them as cannon-fodder. In some ways, perhaps, Shakespeare tends to minimize the genuine grievances of the citizens, so as to arouse sympathy for his hero. He enlarges considerably on the cowardice of the common soldiers. On the other hand, the spokesman for the citizens in the first scene is no Jack Cade: he is given an eloquent and educated speech about their plight, resembling, it is said, the complaints of the Warwickshire peasants. There is nothing in Plutarch to suggest the intolerable behaviour of Coriolanus during his candidature, and his banishment occurs, not immediately after the revocation of his election, but after some later corn riots.
Shakespeare invents the episode of the boy Marcius chasing the butterfly, so as to throw an oblique light on the immaturity of the hero. He omits two acts of trickery by the Tribunes, though in other ways he blackens their characters. He makes Coriolanus go into exile alone – ‘like a lonely dragon’ – not with three or four of his friends. Plutarch introduces Aufidius only at this point in the story: Shakespeare introduces him earlier as a rival, following the suggestion of North’s words:
bicause that many times in battells where they met, they were euer at the encounter one against another, like lustie coragious youthes, striuing in all emulation of honour.
(p. 219)
This chivalric touch, Murry argued,13 led Shakespeare to depict the meeting of the exiled Coriolanus with Aufidius in such a way that the nobility of the Volscian is inconsistent with his previous character and with the envious plotter required for the last scene of the play. Plutarch’s Aufidius is not present when Coriolanus agrees to spare Rome: by introducing him in this scene Shakespeare prepares the way for the assassination. Plutarch describes three successive embassies to Coriolanus before that of the women. The first consisted of his ‘familiar friends’ who are presented with hard conditions of peace and are told to give an answer within thirty days. At the end of that time a second embassy refuses the terms and is given three days to reconsider them. A third embassy consists of priests and soothsayers. The women’s embassy is suggested by Valeria, a point Shakespeare does not use. Shakespeare condenses the first three embassies into single appeals by Cominius and Menenius. Shakespeare does not specify the terms of peace, but refers to them merely as
The first conditions, which they did refuse
And cannot now accept.
(v. iii. 14–15)
Instead he concentrates on Coriolanus’ obsessive desire to burn Rome.
Of great significance, however, is the development of the characters of Menenius and Volumnia. Menenius Agrippa’s sole function in Plutarch is to tell the ‘pretty tale’ of the belly and the body’s members. In the play his plebeian origins are not mentioned: he acts as the hero’s friend and adviser, appearing in thirteen scenes, and he is in some sense the raisonneur of the piece. Volumnia is hardly mentioned by Plutarch – except that she brought up Caius Martius – until she goes to plead with him. There is nothing in Plutarch to suggest the fatal relationship between mother and son, on which Shakespeare based his play.
Three brief examples, all mentioned by George Wyndham,14 will serve to illustrate the closeness with which Shakespeare follows North’s translation. In II. iii the First Folio prints the meaningless lines:
And Nobly nam’d, so twice being Censor,
Was his great Ancestor.
North supplies the missing words:
And Censorinus that was so surnam’d
And nobly nam’d so, twice being Censor.
The second example shows how Shakespeare was led into anachronism by his misunderstanding of North, who says that Coriolanus
was euen such another, as Cato would haue a souldier and a captaine to be: not only terrible, and fierce to laye about him, but to make the enemie afeard with the sound of his voyce, and grimness of his countenaunce.
(p. 240)
The corresponding passage in the Folio reads (with an obvious misprint):
Thou wast a Souldier
Euen to Calues wish, not fierce and terrible
Onely in strokes, but with thy grim lookes, and
The Thunder-like percussion of thy sounds
Thou mad’st thine enemies shake.
(I. iv)
The third example is even more curious. North mentions that ‘a goodly horse with a capparison’ (p. 242) is offered to Coriolanus. In the play, Lartius hails Coriolanus with the words:
Oh Generall:
Here is the Steed, wee the Caparison.
(I. ix)
Several of the longer speeches in the play are based directly on Plutarch – Coriolanus’ attack on the distribution of free corn, and on the Tribunes (III. i), his speech to Aufidius at Antium (IV. v), and Volumnia’s appeal to him to spare Rome are notable examples. An examination of the last of these will exhibit how Shakespeare transformed great prose into greater verse.15
If we helde our peace (my sonne) and determined not to speake, the state of our poore bodies, and present sight of our rayment, would easely bewray to thee what life we haue led at home, since thy exile and abode abroad. But thinke now with thy selfe, howe much more vnfortunatly, then all the women liuinge we are come hether, considering that the sight which should be most pleasaunt to all other to beholde, spitefull fortune hath made most fearefull to vs; making my selfe to see my sonne, and my daughter here, her husband, besieging the walles of his natiue countrie. So as that which is thonly comforte to all other in their aduersitie and miserie, to pray vnto the goddes, and to call to them for aide: is the onely thinge which plongeth vs into most deepe perplexitie. For we can not (alas) together pray, both for victorie, for our countrie, and for safety of thy life also: but a worlde of grieuous curses, yea more then any mortall enemie can heape vppon vs, are forcibly wrapt vp in our prayers. For the bitter soppe of most harde choyce is offered thy wife and children, to forgoe the one of the two: either to lose the persone of thy selfe, or the nurse of their natiue contrie. For my selfe (my sonne) I am determined not to tarie, till fortune in my life time doe make an ende of this warre. For if I cannot persuade thee, rather to doe good vnto both parties, then to ouerthrowe and destroye the one, preferring loue and nature, before the malice and calamitie of warres: thou shalt see, my sonne, and trust vnto it, thou shalt no soner marche forward to assault thy countrie, but thy foote shall treade vpon thy mothers wombe, that brought thee first into this world.
(ed. 1895, pp. 256–7)
This is Shakespeare’s version:
Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself
How more unfortunate than all living women
Are we come hither; since that thy sight, which should
Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts
Constrains them weep, and shake with fear and sorrow
Making the mother, wife, and child to see
The son, the husband, and the father, tearing
His country’s bowels out. And to poor we
Thine enmity’s most capital: thou bar’st us
Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort
That all but we enjoy. For how can we,
Alas, how can we for our country pray,
Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,
Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose
The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,
Our comfort in the country. We must find
An evident calamity, though we had
Our wish, which side should win; for either thou
Must as a foreign recreant be led
With manacles through our streets, or else
Triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin,
And bear the palm for having bravely shed
Thy wife and children’s blood. For myself, son,
I purpose not to wait on fortune till
These wars determine; if I can not persuade thee
Rather to show a noble grace to both parts
Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner
March to assault thy country than to tread –
Trust to’t, thou shalt not – on thy mother’s womb,
That brought thee to this world.
(v. iii. 94–125)
The argument in both speeches is identical and the ideas follow one another in the same order. Shakespeare often makes use of North’s phraseology. There are three chief differences: Shakespeare condenses the sentences describing the difficulty of prayer; he tightens up the structure by rhetorical devices; and he inserts some metaphorical phrases in place of North’s more prosaic ones. As examples of rhetorical ordering of the argument, we may instance the lines –
Making the mother, wife, and child, to see
The son, the husband, and the father –
or the repetition in the lines –
Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,
Whereto we are bound –
or the equally effective repetition:
The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,
Our comfort in the country.
The metaphorical additions go a long way towards increasing the vividness and dramatic effectiveness of the speech. Instead of ‘besieging the walls of his native country’, Shakespeare uses the violent image, ‘tearing/His country’s bowels out’. Then he presents the effects of victory and defeat more concretely than Plutarch had done:
for either thou
Must as a foreign recreant be led
With manacles through our streets, or else
Triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin,
And bear the palm for having bravely shed
Thy wife and children’s blood.
Another example from the same scene will illustrate the way Shakespeare transformed what he borrowed. After Coriolanus’ surrender, he cried out in North’s version:
Oh mother, what haue you done to me? And holding her hard by the right hande, oh mother, sayed he, you haue wonne a happy victorie for your countrie, but mortall and vnhappy for your sonne: for I see my self vanquished by you alone.
(p. 257)
Shakespeare seized on the significant points in this passage, as we can see by the original stage direction Holds her by the hand silent, by the repetition of the words ‘O mother’, and by the lines:
You have won a happy victory to Rome;
But for your son – believe it, O, believe it! –
Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d,
If not most mortal to him.
(v. iii. 186–9)
But whereas Plutarch’s Coriolanus is thinking only of the shame of surrendering to his mother, Shakespeare’s hero knows that the surrender will lead to his own death. Equally significant is the insertion of the lines – the last of a series of images drawn from acting –
Behold, the heavens do ope,
The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
They laugh at.
(v. iii. 183–5)
Coriolanus, with all his faults, is portrayed more sympathetically by Shakespeare than by Plutarch. Plutarch records that his host in Corioli, for whom he intervenes, was an ‘honest wealthie man’: Shakespeare makes him a poor man.16 More significantly, Plutarch actually condemns him for giving in to his mother, while Shakespeare tacitly approves.