Coriolanus

[poliphilo]

Coriolanus is a thin play. Faced with the problem of making a tragic hero out of a stupid bully-boy, Shakespeare loads the dice against his man's antagonists by rendering them as characterless stereotypes of mean-spiritedness (the tribunes, Aufidius) and sheeplike inconstancy (the citizens). In his best plays, Shakespeare makes sure even the walk-on parts are worth the attention of a good actor. In Coriolanus most of the cast are cyphers. 

If Macbeth has too much imagination for politics, Coriolanus has too little. The one is soused in poetry and inwardness, the other never saw a butterfly he didn't want to mammock. This is a fast play, with no soliliquies to hold up the action.  We open on an uprising, proceed to a war and then straight into an election. I've never seen it acted, but I can imagine it's a thrill ride. 

What price honour if your fixation on it turns you into that least honoured thing- a traitor? What price patriotism when you hate the people who "are the city"? What price family values when they produce such brutes?  For all its action-packed swiftness, Coriolanus is a relentlessly bleak play.  Is there anything good to be said about these people, their institutions, their values? 

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My wife has seen three productions of it, and enjoyed none of them. The problem is that you don't want ANYONE to succeed, because they ALL suck. Now, Shakespeare is totally accurate to his source in this, since everybody in that chapter of Plutarch sucks.

But it's hard to enjoy a play where there's nobody to root for.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Elsewhere Shakespeare manages to make us care about bastards. Macbeth, for instance, for all his wickedness, is still recognisably one of us- and that's because he has an inner life. In Coriolanus, though, no-one reflects or thinks or has any self-knowledge.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's not that nobody's nice -- Shakespeare is very good at writing plays full of utter bastards which are nonetheless great fun -- RICHARD III, TITUS ANDRONICUS, KING JOHN. It's that nobody's worth rooting either for OR against.