The City without a Ruler
i
The Republican regime succeeds admirably in turning out the warriors it wants; more important, it manages to control their spiritedness in the service of the city. But there is one obvious exception to this rule—the Coriolanus who goes over to Rome’s enemies. And, paradoxically, it is the very regime designed to keep men loyal to Rome that ends up making a traitor out of the city’s greatest soldier. The Roman regime itself becomes the object of Coriolanus’ indignation, finally turning him against his native land. For Coriolanus the divided rule in the Republic is not a means of harmonizing the competing claims of eros and spiritedness but rather a way of reducing the patricians to the level of the plebeians:
You are plebeians,
If they be senators; and they are no less,
When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate,
And such a one as he, who puts his “shall,”
His popular “shall,” against a graver bench
Than ever frown’d in Greece. By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base; and my soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter ’twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by th’ other.
[III.i.101–2]
Refusing to accept divided rule in Rome, Coriolanus turns traitor to the city that seemed to have such success in maintaining the loyalty of its citizens. Clearly one cannot claim to have understood the Roman regime until one has explained its failure in the case of Coriolanus.
In view of the intemperate manner in which Coriolanus expresses his anger at Rome, it is tempting to lay the blame for this failure entirely at his feet, and explain away his break with his native city on psychological or even psychiatric grounds. Many modern critics treat Coriolanus as a case of “maladjustment,” painting a picture of an immature, awkward boy, given a man’s role to play, but psychologically overdependent on his mother and unable to get along with others.1 Any critic so-minded is of course free to look for psychiatric case studies in Shakespeare, and in any event a full interpretation of Coriolanus must take into account his relationship to his family and the defects of his upbringing. Nevertheless, to concentrate solely on the ways in which Coriolanus fails to adjust to the Roman community is to adopt the city’s standards uncritically, as if there were no legitimate grounds for objecting to its regime and as if winning acceptance in Rome were the measure of human worth. But the fact is that Coriolanus’ speeches in Act III, scene i, however passionately argued, do raise some serious questions about divided rule in Rome, and before digging beneath the surface of the play to find deep psychological motives for Coriolanus’ behavior, one ought to study the reasons he himself gives for his actions. The narrowly psychiatric view of Coriolanus characteristically trivializes the meaning of his story by refusing to take seriously his quarrel with Rome and ignoring what he has to say in justification of his stance. By contrast, if one examines his arguments carefully, one finds that his break with the city raises as many doubts about Rome as it does about Coriolanus, thereby deepening our understanding of the political roots of his tragedy.
Coriolanus’ first objection to the Republican regime concerns its potential for instability. He sees that everything hinges on the self-restraint of the plebeians, and does not believe that the Senate’s policy is calculated to keep them from misusing their authority. On the contrary, he thinks any concessions to the plebeians will only make them hungry for more power:
How shall this bosom multiplied digest
The Senate’s courtesy? Let deeds express
What’s like to be their words: “We did request it,
We are the greater pole, and in true fear
They gave us our demands.” Thus we debase
The nature of our seats and make the rabble
Call our cares fears; which will in time
Break ope the locks a’ th’ Senate, and bring in
The crows to peck the eagles.
[III.i.131–39]
Coriolanus views Rome not as a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, but rather as an aristocracy on its way to becoming a democracy. Julius Caesar shows that his fears concerning the role of the plebeians in the city are well grounded,2 but he underestimates the time it will take for the plebeians to become corrupted. It is debatable whether one can regard a regime that lasts several centuries as merely transitional. However, Coriolanus does not simply foresee trouble for Rome in the future, but has a more important criticism of the mixed regime that is already applicable in his own time. He thinks that the need to compromise with the plebeians repeatedly prevents the patricians from doing what is truly virtuous:
This double worship,
Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,
Cannot conclude but by the yea and no
Of general ignorance—it must omit
Real necessities, and give way the while
To unstable lightness. Purpose so barr’d, it follows
Nothing is done to purpose. . . .
. . . Your dishonor
Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state
Of that integrity which should becom’t,
Not having the power to do the good it would,
For th’ ill which doth control’t.
[III.i.142–49, 157–61]
According to Coriolanus, the mixed regime cannot be wholly devoted to its “purpose,” or fully “do the good it would.” Rome is insufficiently devoted to the goal of producing warriors because of the concessions it makes to the plebeians. The key word in Coriolanus’ speech is “integrity”: in his view, Rome’s fault is that it is not of one mind. While claiming to be committed to the pursuit of military glory, Rome at times rewards cowardice instead of punishing it (III.i.122–27). The indecisiveness of Rome is reflected in the ambiguity of the word Roman even in the Republic; does it refer to a special type of man, who has to be cultivated (the noble warrior), or does it simply refer to anyone who happens to come from the city of Rome?
Two different views are expressed in Coriolanus on what it is to be a Roman, a citizen of the Republic.3 According to Sicinius and the plebeians, anyone living in Rome is a citizen of Rome:
Sicinius. What is the city but the people?
All. True,
The people are the city.
[III.i.197–98]
For Coriolanus, on the other hand, Roman is a term of distinction, and only a warrior deserves to be called a citizen of Rome. The plebeians may customarily be considered Romans, but it takes more than merely being born within the city limits to make Coriolanus regard a man as a fellow citizen:
I would they were barbarians, as they are,
Though in Rome litter’d; not Romans, as they are not,
Though calved i’ th’ porch o’ th’ Capitol!
[III.i.237–39]4
Coriolanus’ use of terms for animal procreation, litter’d and calved, reveals his point: the plebeians no more deserve to be called Romans than do the tame beasts who happen to be born every year within the city’s walls. Coriolanus cannot accept the idea that a cowardly man could be a true son of Rome, and feels debased to share the name of Roman with plebeians (III.i.108, 135–36). He wants Rome to take an unequivocal stand in favor of the warrior type he himself represents, and, as Sicinius understands, will not be satisfied until the only Romans are men just like him (III.i.262–64). He wants one party to conquer the other once and for all and put an end to the divided regime in the city. For Coriolanus, the distinction between patricians and plebeians resembles the difference between two species of animals,5 and therefore he thinks of the plebeians as slaves (I.i.199, I.v.7, IV.v.77). In view of the tradition of comparing Rome to Sparta,6 one might formulate Coriolanus’ wish for Rome this way: the relation of patrician to plebeian should be that of Spartan to helot, that is, of conqueror to conquered, or master to slave. Sparta was more successful than Rome in suppressing eros, with the result that Spartan is synonymous with austere in a way that Roman is not. More fully dedicated than Rome to the goal of encouraging martial valor, Sparta and its way of life would inevitably be more attractive to Coriolanus. If he had his way in Rome, he would reduce the number of citizens (by restricting citizenship to patricians and regarding the plebeians as slaves) and concentrate on making every citizen fully a Roman in his sense, namely a public-spirited warrior.
But to turn Rome into Sparta would require major changes in the city, above all some restraint of the acquisitiveness of the patricians. The basis of the Spartan regime was equality of landholdings among citizens, and contempt for moneymaking.7 But as we have seen, Roman laws favor inequality of wealth and support, and in effect legitimate, usury. To bring about the changes Coriolanus wants in Rome, then, he would have to change the Roman laws, that is, become a legislator for his city. Indeed the central difference between Sparta and Rome is that the one city had a legislator at its origin and the other did not. It is perhaps to suggest this point that Shakespeare, for no apparent reason and without following any source, introduces the name of the Spartan legislator into Coriolanus. Menenius tells the tribunes: “I cannot call you Lycurguses” (II.i.55), comparing them unfavorably with the celebrated founder of the Spartan regime, the framer of the city’s laws and institutions.8 Since one man designed it, the Spartan regime can be viewed as the product of reason. But as Shakespeare discreetly hints, no Lycurguses can be found in Rome, and the Roman regime is arrived at by chance.9 Rome frames its institutions by a process of trial and error, adopting a law if it happens to work. The Roman regime continues to change in response to the difficulties the city encounters, until it achieves a kind of equilibrium. Rome’s greatness thus ultimately depends on good luck in finding the right laws at the right time, and one’s appreciation of the city must be qualified by an understanding of the role fortune plays in its success.10
The creation of the tribunate is a good illustration of this point. The way this sweeping reform in the Roman constitution is made on the spur of the moment is a paradigm of how haphazardly the city operates. The patricians are interested only in putting down the rebellion, and not in perfecting the Republican regime. As Coriolanus perceives, the tribunate is not created on the basis of anybody’s opinion as to what is good for Rome as a whole in the long run, but rather because it seems to be necessary to the patricians at the moment:
In a rebellion,
When what’s not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen; in a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power i’ th’ dust.
[III.i.166–70]
The plebeians never convince the patricians that the tribunate is in the public interest of Rome, but instead create a situation in which it seems to be in the private interests of each and every patrician to give the other party a stake in the regime. In Rome a system of party conflict becomes the substitute for the wisdom and foresight of a legislator like Lycurgus, who has a purpose in mind in framing his laws and understands the effect they will have. By contrast, the patricians act blindly in granting the right of the tribunate: Coriolanus calls them “unwise” and “reckless” (III.i.91–92). They toss a bone to the ambitious among the plebeians, without calculating the profound effect the existence of the tribunate will have on Rome in the future.
Coriolanus’ critique of the Republican regime uncovers a possible defect in that regime: the absence of a legislator, not simply at its founding, but throughout its history. Rome lacks truly wise rulers, in the sense of men who have a comprehensive understanding of the common good, and no one in the great city really knows why it is great. Recognizing Rome’s lack of a legislator in turn leads to an important question about Coriolanus. If he wants a Spartan regime for his city, he will have to become its legislator. Fortunately for him he seems in some respects qualified for the role. He understands the existing Roman order at least as well as anyone else in the city, despises the mixed regime, advances very specific ideas on how to remake Rome, and, most importantly, seems to have the power to become the founder of a new regime. The patricians are devoted to him, and after his victories against the Volsces, the plebeians, too, are disposed to honor his authority:
The nobles bended,
As to Jove’s statue, and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.
I never saw the like.
[II.i.265–68]
This is a rare moment in Roman history, as one man stands above the party conflicts of the city like a god, worshiped by both sides, seemingly able to do anything he wants with Rome. But Coriolanus lets the opportunity escape him and soon is rejected by both patricians and plebeians. Yet his banishment does not end his story. Once more he approaches his native city as a conquering hero, only this time he intends to conquer Rome. And once again he has control of both parties in his grasp:
All places yield to him ere he sits down,
And the nobility of Rome are his.
The senators and patricians love him too;
The tribunes are no soldiers, and their people
Will be as rash in the repeal, as hasty
To expel him thence. I think he’ll be to Rome
As is the aspray to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.
[IV.vii.28–35]
There is a “sovereignty” in Coriolanus’ nature: he strikes others as a kind of god, and men like to believe that their institutions have a divine, rather than a simply human, origin. If the Roman Republic is ever to be given a unified regime, Coriolanus would seem to be the man to do it, and yet none of his ideas for Rome are ever put into effect. The most puzzling problem about Coriolanus is, Why—with everything seemingly in his favor—does he fail to rule, and remake, his native city?
ii
Any consideration of Coriolanus as a ruler must begin from one fact: he has remarkable success as a leader in wartime but is a complete failure at leading in peacetime. When he leads the Romans against the Volsces, the Romans win; when he leads the Volsces against the Romans, the Volsces win. His individual powers of leadership appear to make the difference between victory and defeat in war.11 He cannot simply be unfit for leadership in any ordinary sense, especially when he is able to convince even his one-time enemies to accept him as a general. Somehow Coriolanus’ inability to rule Rome must be related to a difference between wartime and peacetime. From what we have already seen, we know that he can appeal to men’s spiritedness and their concern for the common good, but is openly contemptuous of their appetites and their concern for their private interests. For that reason, men will consent to his rule during wartime, when their spiritedness is aroused and they clearly perceive a threat to the common good, but not during peacetime, when they are more interested in following good providers than good protectors. Coriolanus’ mistake is not realizing that men look for different qualities in leaders in war and peace, as Aufidius understands when he criticizes his rival’s inability
to be other than one thing, not moving
From th’ casque to th’ cushion, but commanding peace
Even with the same austerity and garb
As he controll’d the war.
[IV.vii.42–45]
In trying to show her son how to adapt to peacetime politics and win the consulship, Volumnia, in contrast to Aufidius, bases her reasoning on an analogy between peace and war:
I have heard you say
Honor and policy, like unsever’d friends,
I’ th’ war do grow together; grant that, and tell me
In peace what each of them by th’ other lose
That they combine not there. . . .
If it be honor in your wars to seem
The same you are not, which for your best ends,
You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse,
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honor, as in war, since that in both
It stands in like request? . . .
Now, this no more dishonors you at all
Than to take in a town with gentle words,
Which else would put you to your fortune and
The hazard of much blood.
[III.ii.41–45, 46–51, 58–61]
Even though Coriolanus fails to answer his mother’s argument, we must consider whether deceptions in peacetime really are no different from deceptions in wartime. Aufidius provides us with a clue when he counsels the Volsces “to seem the same they are not” in war:
Nor did you think it folly
To keep your great pretenses veil’d till when
They needs must show themselves.
[I.ii.19–21]
Aufidius reveals the distinctive aspect of military deceptions, the fact that eventually “they needs must show themselves.” A war stratagem is in the end revealed to have been a stratagem, for with the victory of one side or the other, all deceptions come to light. The victor can afford to tell the vanquished: “My retreat was just to draw you into an ambush,” if the tactical details have not already become painfully obvious. None of this, however, is true of the stratagems of peacetime politics, where deceptions must be kept up forever. One cannot sue for the consulship and then announce to the people: “I said I wanted to serve you, but now that I’m in office I admit that was just a lie to get the post: in truth, I can’t stand the sight—or smell—of you.” Volumnia talks as if, once Coriolanus became consul, he could freely reveal his contempt for the plebeians (III.ii.20–23). But a consul must still avoid antagonizing the tribunes, as long as they can veto any action he takes in peacetime. Moreover, as the tribunes understand, a candidate for the consulship can be held to whatever promises he makes to the people (II.iii.192–94), and thus cannot honorably repudiate the pledges of friendship he has publicly given them.
The problem, then, for Coriolanus is that if he ever begins to flatter the plebeians he can never stop, for in seeking their voices he would grant their right to sit in judgment on him, and in that sense, acknowledge their superiority. As Volumnia unconsciously lets slip, to win power in Rome Coriolanus must let himself “go, and be rul’d” (III.ii.90). A general does not subject himself to his opponent by using a stratagem, since his aim is to have his conquest openly acknowledged. By contrast, a victory in an election is not regarded as a defeat of the electorate. Quite the opposite, it is viewed as the triumph of their will: “The people have spoken.” By accepting office, Coriolanus would not conquer Rome but would instead surrender, as he sees it, to the plebeians. Volumnia tells her son to treat the plebeians just as he would a foreign enemy, which is of course what he really wants to do.12 He might not mind deceiving the plebeians in order to triumph over them, that is, if he could stand up in the end and assert his superiority to them openly. But that is exactly what Rome will not let him do. It offers deception, not as a temporary tactic, but as a permanent way of life. Instead of treating the plebeians as foreigners, Coriolanus must regard them as fellow citizens if he stands for office, and that runs counter to his deepest political convictions.
What Coriolanus senses is that the whole mixed regime of Rome is one enormous deception, but it is a peacetime stratagem that does not work quite as the patricians think it does. The patricians try to give the plebeians the semblance of power without the substance, hoping that the tribunate will make them believe they have a share in the ruling of Rome, without actually interfering with the decisions the Senate wants to make. The electoral procedures of Rome are a similar smokescreen for the Senate. It wants to be able to select the men it thinks right for the consulship, and yet give the people the impression that the ultimate decision was really theirs. The Roman Senate thinks it has solved the political problem of at one and the same time framing wise laws and getting men to consent to them. The patricians believe the constitutional powers of the people are a sham because they have complete confidence in their own ability to manipulate the politically naive plebeians in any direction they choose (III.ii.72–89). The decisive error of the patricians is to underestimate the talents of the politically quite sophisticated tribunes, to forget that men like Sicinius and Brutus are at least as skilled as they are in manipulating the plebeians. The tribunes are capable of using deception themselves; they can hide their real power behind a smokescreen, too, making it seem, for example, that the attack on Coriolanus was the people’s idea, rather than their own (II.iii.213–63). When they can mobilize the people, the tribunes can neutralize the will of the Senate, and transform their office from an empty title into a genuine force in Rome. The requirement of obtaining the agreement of the plebeians to the Senate’s nomination of Coriolanus results in Rome’s banishing its true defender and leaving itself a prey to its enemies (III.iii.127–33). The need for consent here turns wisdom into folly. The patricians believe that the reality in Rome is that the Senate rules; the people only appear to have a share in power. But what happens to Coriolanus shows that in politics, appearances are sometimes the only reality. If ambitious men are given authority on paper, they will find a way to exercise it.
The problem of appearance and reality, which is raised in one way or another in most of Shakespeare’s plays, takes a special form in Coriolanus. Politics is presented as a realm of appearances, and that is why Coriolanus rejects it. He is no hypocrite (III.i.255–57, III.iii.27–29), and cannot act a part (II.ii.144–45, III.ii.14–16, 105–23, V.iii.40–41). As different as he is from the Prince of Denmark, Coriolanus could say along with Hamlet: “I know not ‘seems.’” He is afraid that if he does play a role, the appearance will become reality:
I will not do’t,
Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
And by my body’s action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.
[III.ii.120–23]
Because Coriolanus disdains concerning himself with appearances, he shows no appreciation of the need for rhetoric. In wartime he is able to rouse his men to action with a stirring speech (I.vi.66–85), but he fully believes what he says in this speech: it just happens to be wholly appropriate in the particular circumstances. He does not see that different situations require different approaches, as shown by the fact that he gives essentially the same speech again in circumstances where it is no longer appropriate (III.i.149–57).13 Above all, he is evidently insensitive to the distinction between a public and a private situation. Twice he discusses in public what should have been discussed only in private: when he tries to talk the patricians into abridging the plebeians’ rights (III.i) and when he grants an audience to his mother, wife, and child among the Volsces (V.iii). In the first case, what he says is meant for the ears of his own party alone, not the plebeians, as his fellow patricians try to tell him (III.i.63, 74–75, 115, 139). In the second case, when Coriolanus is among the Volsces he makes a major issue out of not granting any private interviews to Romans (V.iii.6–8, 92–93), a resolve which works to his disadvantage when he has to deal with his family. Because the scene takes place in public, and the Volsces are witness to everything he says to his mother, Coriolanus has no room for maneuvering. If he had spoken to Volumnia in private, he might have been able to put a fairer face on his actions when he came to report the results to his new masters. Also the fact that he grants a public audience to Volumnia allows her to use the force of shame against him (“let us shame him with our knees,” V.iii.169). His capitulation to her is due in part to his reluctance to appear like an ungrateful child in front of others. As he himself admits, he feels a need to appear better than “common sons” (V.iii.52).
In short, Coriolanus is unwilling or unable to admit that certain things should not be said in public. He shows signs of wanting his life to be like an open book, available for all to read, so that no one can think he feels constrained to hide anything from the world. But even though he seems concerned about always standing vindicated in the eyes of others (V.ii.92–93, V.iii.2–4), some things he wishes to conceal. In fact, he wants to keep private what from a political standpoint ought to be made public. He will not bare his wounds to the plebeians, even though it would further his political cause.14 One aspect Shakespeare has added to the character of Coriolanus is an acute sense of personal shame: he is inhibited by a fear of standing naked before the plebeians (II.ii.137). In some sense, then, he must be concerned about appearances, at least about how he himself appears in public. He wants to appear just as he thinks fit and not to have to alter his appearance to suit anyone else’s expectations. The essential point is for him to maintain control over how he appears, which would explain why he claims he will show his wounds only in private (II.iii.76–77, 108–9). “He said he had wounds, which he could show in private” (II.iii.166), that is to say, could show if he wanted to. In public appearances Coriolanus will not adapt his appearance to what the public wants, which is of course exactly the opposite of the way a political man would behave. Repeatedly in Coriolanus it is of the utmost importance whether a scene takes place in public or in private, that is, between men who have reason to conceal things from each other, or between men who can be free and open with each other. Coriolanus’ inability to perceive what is called for in a public as opposed to a private situation is his chief disqualification for peacetime politics in Republican Rome.
iii
One final reason why Coriolanus intuitively recoils from politics leads to the central issue of the play. The necessities of politics force him to think about questions he would rather forget. In the course of her little political catechism, Volumnia tells him that at times his “honor” will require him to do things he normally regards as dishonorable:
I would dissemble with my nature where
My fortunes and my friends at stake requir’d
I should do so in honor.
[III.ii.62–64]
This advice is, to say the least, disconcerting to Coriolanus. He would like to conduct himself by a simple rule in life: “Do what is honorable,” but his mother and Menenius show him that what is honorable varies with different situations. That reasons of state can force a noble man to do base things is something Coriolanus finds it hard to accept:
Must I
With my base tongue give to my noble heart
A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do’t;
Yet, were there but this single plot to lose,
This mould of Martius, they to dust should grind it
And throw’t against the wind.
[III.ii.99–104]
Coriolanus wants his values to be absolute, so that he can follow them without question or doubt.15 His mother, however, claims that he cannot unthinkingly obey the dictates of honor, as defined by Rome, because there are extreme cases in which a man can no longer afford the luxury of being noble:
You are too absolute,
Though therein you can never be too noble,
But when extremities speak.
[III.ii.39–41]
Coriolanus learns that his code of honor cannot in all cases yield unambiguous and indisputable answers to the question, “What must I do?” because he will have to decide for himself when and where the command to act nobly applies. Moreover, the fact that what is honorable seems to depend on changing political conditions casts doubts on the status of honor itself. Coriolanus would like the laws of honor to resemble the laws of nature, equally valid at all times and at all places, but Volumnia reveals to him the conventional side to honor. The regime defines what is honorable, and therefore honor stands or falls with the regime.16
The demands of politics make Coriolanus aware of his dependence on the city of Rome, and as long as he prides himself on being self-reliant that awareness must grate on him. He is so concerned about being indebted to anyone for anything that he finds it easy to forget the name of a man who once helped him (I.ix.82–91),17 and he never fails to point out when he has accomplished something alone (I.vi.76, I.viii.7–9, IV.i.29, V.vi.113–16). Coriolanus does seem to win battles single-handedly, but the consulship, requiring as it does the voices of the plebeians, is one goal he cannot achieve by himself. Considered in the abstract, the idea of serving Rome strikes Coriolanus as a noble aim. But in standing for the consulship, he is forced to see the city in concrete human terms, to look one at a time at the men for whom he has been fighting. Viewed from its streets and in the light of the sun, Rome no longer seems such a splendid object for his devotion after all. Campaigning in Rome, Coriolanus confronts the disturbing fact that in serving the city he is at least in part serving the plebeians:
Your voices? For your voices I have fought;
Watch’d for your voices; for your voices bear
Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six
I have seen and heard of; for your voices have
Done many things, some less, some more. Your voices?
Indeed, I would be consul.
[II.iii.126–31]
These lines reek of irony, but an irony that could be turned back upon the ironist. For once, Coriolanus is willing to speak the lies the Roman regime requires, to claim that he, a patrician, is nothing but the servant of the plebeians. But for a moment he may begin to suspect that the lies the Roman patricians speak so glibly contain a basic truth, that in reality all the fighting he has done, all the suffering he has undergone, have served no other purpose than to protect the plebeians he despises.18 If that were true, it would be a bitter pill for the noble Coriolanus to swallow. In the fable of the belly, Menenius claims that the patricians want to serve the plebeians, not rule them. He of course regards the fable as a pretty tale that suits his immediate purposes, but it may reveal more than he realizes. In some sense the patricians are saddled with the true burden in Rome, the burden of rule, of protecting the whole city, and thus principally the plebeians. The mere fact that the patricians, however much they think they are lying, still feel compelled to claim to be the servants of the plebeians shows that the plebeians must have some real power in the city, if only by virtue of their numbers. A true master does not have to give an account of himself (I.i.144) to his slaves. Coriolanus sees that as long as a mixed regime prevails in Rome, as long as one party does not openly rule the other, the city leaves in doubt for whose sake it really exists, the patricians or the plebeians. Since a warrior is only as good as the cause he fights for, the absolute Coriolanus cannot tolerate any ambiguity about the city’s purposes in Rome.
Confronted with the duplicity upon which the Roman mixed regime is based, Coriolanus must wonder whether his honor is hollow at the core. In his very first speech in the play, he tells the plebeians that they are no secure foundation for a man’s nobility. To build on them is to build on mud:
You are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
Or hailstone in the sun . . .
. . . He that depends
Upon your favors swims with fins of lead,
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?
With every minute you do change a mind,
And call him noble, that was now your hate;
Him vild, that was your garland.
[I.i.172–74, 179–84]
Coriolanus likes hard, solid, sharply-defined objects, not soft, liquid, diffuse objects; to call a woman an “icicle” (V.iii.65) is his idea of a compliment, but ice that melts earns his scorn. His choice of imagery reflects on a low level his preference for the immutable over the changeable, and his consequent search for something absolutely sure, something on which he can unconditionally depend. What he holds against the plebeians is their fickleness. He thinks he can be sure of his nobility, but the plebeians keep changing their minds as to what is noble. Coriolanus would like his honor to be founded purely on his “own desert” (II.iii.65), but standing for the consulship he is forced to recognize that to be honored in Rome he is in large part dependent on the whims of the plebeians.
A contradiction lies at the heart of Coriolanus’ character. He seeks honor but dislikes the requirement of having other men to honor him. Thinking he can stand alone on the basis of his honor, he finds instead that his pursuit of honor binds him more closely to the city. Another aspect Shakespeare has added to the character of Coriolanus is his reluctance to hear himself praised (I.ix.13–15, II.i.168). In part, this is a sign of personal modesty (I.ix.53, 69–70), but it is difficult to think of Coriolanus as genuinely humble, and one might suspect that his antipathy to being honored in public is rooted in his pride. Hearing him praised for his heroism, men might think he acts heroically for the sake of praise (I.i.30–40). The implication that he is in need of praise, and therefore of other men to praise him, would impugn his heroic self-sufficiency.19 Coriolanus will only accept praise as free acknowledgment of his intrinsic merit, not as payment for services rendered; he wants his honors to come to him, as Cominius tells him, “in sign of what you are, not to reward / What you have done” (I.ix.26–27). Furthermore, Coriolanus wants his deeds to speak for themselves (II.ii.127–28), because only deeds cannot be faked. As long as the world is full of flatterers, anyone can have mere speeches made in his honor. Coriolanus’ anger at hearing himself praised in speeches is part of his general disgust at the confusing of appearance and reality in Rome:
When drums and trumpets shall
I’ th’ field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be
Made all of false-fac’d soothing! . . .
In acclamations hyperbolical,
As if I lov’d my little should be dieted
In praises sauc’d with lies
[I.ix.42–44, 50–53]
In Coriolanus’ eyes, Rome, and especially the plebeian class, does not always distinguish sufficiently between real and apparent merit, and thus he scorns its praise.
But Coriolanus’ contempt for mercenary praise does not mean that he is wholly indifferent to the opinion other men have of him. On the contrary, he wants to be honored in Rome, but only for what he really is, not for what people say about him. He objects to being confused with the men who have risen to prominence by flattering the people rather than by achieving anything on their own:
his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further deed to have them at all into their estimation and report.
[II.ii.25–28]
Only if Coriolanus can become consul without flattering the people can he feel that being honored does not make him dependent on others. Thus Coriolanus hates the people of Rome precisely because they fail to honor him properly, that is, without any concessions to them on his part. This point is made clear when one of the Senate’s officers claims that Coriolanus does not concern himself with what the people think of him:
Faith, there hath been many great men that have flatter’d the people, who ne’er lov’d them; and there be many that they have lov’d they know not wherefore; so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground. Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their dispositions, and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see’t.
[II.ii.6–15]
This view is immediately contradicted by another officer:
If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he wav’d indifferently ’twixt doing them neither good nor harm; but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render it him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. Now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love.
[II.ii.16–23]20
This observation on Coriolanus is borne out by his conduct later in the play. If he did not care whether or not the plebeians honored him, he would not punish them for failing to do so, as Plutarch explicitly observes:
For he that disdaineth to make much of the people and to have their favor should much more scorn to seek to be revenged when he is repulsed. For to take a repulse and denial of honor so inwardly to the heart, cometh of no other cause but that they did too earnestly desire it.21
Coriolanus’ hatred of the people is based on his secret desire to be worshiped by them, so that his anger against Rome is best understood as that of a god seeking vengeance on the mere mortals who have betrayed their faith in him:
You speak a’ th’ people
As if you were a god to punish; not
A man of their infirmity.
[III.i.80–82]
Because of the blasphemy of the plebeians against him, Coriolanus turns on Rome and leaves the city:
Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back;
There is a world elsewhere.
[III.iii.134–36]
Ultimately Coriolanus is not satisfied with the honors Rome gives him because they come to him smelling of the plebeians (III.iii.120–23). For him, the Republic’s honors are corrupted by their source, but as he leaves Rome, he fails to consider one question: Is there any source of honor for him outside the city?22
Coriolanus’ hesitation at entering the city’s domestic politics reveals that the Roman mixed regime is the patricians’ attempt at concealing their own rule. But the tribunes too can hide their power behind the Republican institutions. With both the senators and the tribunes working by indirect means, manipulating men for hidden purposes, no one seems to be willing to stand up in Rome and claim the right to rule the city.23 Coriolanus’ objections to politics in Rome all point in one direction: the city is without a ruler in the fullest sense. Roman peacetime politics is a battleground on which nobody ever claims complete victory, and therefore no one ever has to admit total defeat. As the one man in the city who scorns deceptions and partial victories (I.vi.47–48), Coriolanus appears to be the one man destined to achieve true rule over Rome. But his involvement with Roman politics raises doubts in Coriolanus’ mind about the worth of his way of life, particularly because he sees that his goal of living nobly makes him dependent on the plebeians he detests to acknowledge his nobility. Coriolanus comes to despise the city because it demands that he compromise his virtue and prevents him from being self-reliant. His aim therefore becomes to live without a city, even as he forces the city to live without him. Coriolanus and Rome reach a crossroad at the end of Act III, and try to go their separate ways. The city banishes Coriolanus and he banishes the city, for they both think they are self-sufficient (III.iii.135, IV.vi.12–15, 36–37). Their claims are tested in Acts IV and V of the play.