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profound awe of her person and of her rights in him is itself a principle of such intrinsic greatness and energy as would burst asunder the cold dry ligatures of an ignoble and ungenerous nature. When, upon her coming out to intercede with him, he says, "My mother bows; as if Olympus to a molehill should in supplication nod"-we have the sublimity of filial reverence, imaged in a form not more magnificent in itself than characteristic of the speaker.

Volumnia has the same essential greatness of character, and the same high-strung pride; the whole being cast, however, in a perfectly feminine mold, and rendered mellow and considerate by a larger experience and a more disinterested spirit. More firm and steady, too, because less passionate, her pride is never inflamed into any breach of propriety and decorum: on the contrary, she seems to become more dignified and self-possessed when her pride is chafed and galled. And her energy of will and thought, if not greater than her son's, yet in the end outwrestles his, because it proceeds on grounds less selfish and personal. It was a very profound insight of woman's nature that led the Poet to represent her as exhorting her son to temporize with the people, and to use arts for conciliating them which had no allowance in his bosom's truth; for even so woman, as having less of willfulness and more of sensibility in the reason, naturally judges the quality of an action more by the consequences which she hopes or fears therefrom. What a story does the life of this mother and this son, with their reciprocal action and influence, as set forth in the play, tell us of the old Roman matronage, and of that profound religion toward womanhood which formed so large and powerful an element in the social constitution of republican Rome! And what a comment does this deep awe of motherhood, taken along with the history of that wonderful nation, read upon the precept,-"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee!" For reverence of children to their fathers is the principle that

binds together successive generations in one continuous life. So that the loosening or impairing of this tie is the beginning of national dissolution. For, in forgetting the past, men do but teach the future to forget themselves; and where we find a present that honors not a past, there we may be sure the very genius of nationality is gone.

Various other characters in this noble play are wisely conceived, and nicely discriminated. The contrast between Volumnia and Virgilia is wrought out with the greatest delicacy and felicity. And the marshaling of the materials, the adjustment of the parts, the whole social and political ordonnance of the drama, discover such a form and measure of constructive and administrative judgment as might sustain the weight of an empire.

COMMENTS

By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS

CORIOLANUS

Now we apprehend that Shakspere has not treated the subject of Coriolanus after this right royal fashion of poetry. He has dealt fairly with the vices as well as the virtues of his hero. The scene in the second act, in which Coriolanus stands for the consulship, is amongst the most remarkable examples of Shakspere's insight into character. In Plutarch he found a simple fact related without any comment:-"Now, Marcius, following this custom, showed many wounds and cuts upon his body, which he had received in seventeen years' service at the wars, and in many sundry battles, being ever the foremost man that did set out feet to fight; so that there was not a man among the people but was ashamed of himself to refuse so valiant a man; and one of them said to another, We must needs choose him consul, there is no remedy." But in his representation of this fact Shakspere had to create a character, and to make that character act and re-act upon the character of the people. Coriolanus was essentially and necessarily proud. His education, his social position, his individual supremacy, made him so. He lives in a city of factions, and he dislikes, of course, the faction opposed to his order. The people represent the opinions that he dislikes, and he therefore dislikes the people. That he has pity and love for humanity, however humble, we have already seen. Coming into contact with the Roman populace for their suffrages, his uppermost thought is "bid them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean." He outwardly despises that vanity of the people which will not

reward desert unless it go hand in hand with solicitation.KNIGHT, Pictorial Shakspere.

The pride of Coriolanus is however not that which comes from self-surrender to and union with some power, or person, or principle higher than oneself. It is two-fold, a passionate self-esteem which is essentially egotistic; and secondly a passionate prejudice of class. His nature is the reverse of cold or selfish; his sympathies are deep, warm and generous; but a line, hard and fast, has been drawn for him by the aristocratic tradition, and it is only within that line that he permits his sympathies to play. To the surprise of the Tribunes, he can accept well-pleased a subordinate command under Cominius. He yields with kindly condescension to accept the devotion and fidelity of Menenius, and cherishes towards the old man a filial regard the feeling of a son, who has the consciousness that he is greater than his father. He must dismiss Menenius disappointed from the Volscian camp; but he contrives an innocent fraud by means of which the old senator will fancy that he has affected more for the peace of Rome than another could. For Virgilia, the gentle woman in whom his heart finds rest, Coriolanus has a manly tenderness, and constant freshness of adhesion:

O, a kiss

Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgin'd it e'er since.

In his boy he has a father's joy, and yields to an ambitious hope, and a yearning forward to his son's possible future of heroic action, in which there is something of touching, paternal weakness:

The god of soldiers,

With the consent of supreme Jove, inform

Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st prove

To shame unvulnerable, and stick i̇' the wars

Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,

And saving those that eye thee!

His wife's friend Valeria is the "moon of Rome,"

Chaste as the icicle

That's curdied by the frost from purest snow

And hangs on Dian's temple.

In his mother Volumnia, the awful Roman matron, he rejoices with a noble enthusiasm and pride; and while she is present always feels himself by comparison with this great mother, inferior and unimportant.

But Cominius, Menenius, and Virgilia, Valeria and Volumnia, and his boy belong to the privileged class, they are patrician. Beyond this patrician class neither his sympathies nor his imagination find it possible to range. The plebeians are "a common cry of curs" whose breath Coriolanus hates. He cannot like Bolingbroke flatter their weakness while he despises them inwardly. He is not even indifferent towards them; he rather rejoices in their malice and displeasure; if the nobility would let him use his sword he would make a quarry "with thousands of these quarter'd slaves," as high as he could pick his lance. Sicinius the Tribune is "the Triton of the minnows." When Coriolanus departs from Rome, as though all the virtue of the city were resident in himself, he reverses the apparent fact and pronounces a sentence of banishment against those whom he leaves behind; "I banish you." Brutus is warranted by the fact when he says

You speak o' the people
As if you were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity.

And yet the weakness, the inconstancy, and the incapacity of apprehending facts which are the vices of the people, reflect and repeat themselves in the great patrician; his aristocratic vices counterbalance their plebeian. He is rigid and obstinate; but under the influence of an angry egoism he can renounce his principles, his party and his native city. He will not bear away to his private use the paltry booty of the Volsces; but to obtain the consulship

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