Killing Coriolanus

It was rare that he [Hades, king of the dead] left his dark realm to visit Olympus or the earth, nor was he urged to do so. He was not a welcome visitor. He was unpitying, inexorable, but just; a terrible, not an evil god. – On Hades in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology

Opening his study of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Harold Goddard aptly complains: “In proportion to its merit, Coriolanus is possibly Shakespeare’s most neglected play.” This is a neglect which I lament as well. Reared from the womb by his brutalist, bludgeoner of a mother Volumnia, the Roman Cariolanus is a killing machine dispatched early in the play to war against his and Rome’s mortal foe, Aufidius. Coriolanus is, yet again, successful though only after significant physical harm and heroic feats of bravery and cunning. He is the clear choice to be Rome’s next consul, but there is a snag: Custom – wretched word to Coriolanus – requires he humble himself before the Roman people and ask their permission to be consul. This is detestable to Coriolanus. Why, he needed not their permission to go off to war nor to bleed and nearly die on the battlefield while they slept peacefully in warm beds. He will not – he cannot – play the sycophant. He cannot lie and pretend to care about a fickle opinion that varies as the wind. Coriolanus is refreshingly free of any concern whatsoever of what the public thinks of him. If Machiavelli wrote The Prince to show the need at times for a consequentialist, strategic dissimulation, Coriolanus was written to ask at what price to gain the world yet lose one’s soul? And though he seems to often lose his head when dealing with inferiors, he never loses his soul. Ultimately Coriolanus is banished from a Rome outdone with his “pride,” and he seeks out his old foe Aufudius offering his death or his services rendering vengeance upon Rome – a Rome which includes friends and family. At the fatal – of sorts – climax of the drama when Coriolanus – relenting before the eyes of his beloved wife and son who have come to him pleading mercy – yields to love and refuses revenge, Machiavelli somewhere winked. I have noted before in the character of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet that as one ages, his long held opinions on works of art can change. Lion-hearted Coriolanus is now among my favorite Shakespearean characters.